


synk

by starsidespica



Series: metempsychosis [1]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Ciel nosurge Fusion, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kidnapping, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Miscommunication, Morally Questionable Actions, Potential Stockholm Syndrome, Recovery, Self-Esteem Issues, Starvation, Theft, the author is bad at tagging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-05-15 22:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 82,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19305109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsidespica/pseuds/starsidespica
Summary: Yuuki Mishima meets a boy on the other side of his smartphone.





	1. The First Year

**Author's Note:**

> synk: Hymmnos, verb; to join together or overlap

Yuuki Mishima sprawled out in his seat—the early-morning train barren by Tokyo standards—and yawned. The half-dozen other occupants ignored him, too engrossed in their phones—or too asleep, in the case of a businessman in a rather rumpled suit with drool dripping down his stubbly chin—to care about the sharp crack that followed as his hand met the standing bar next to the door.

He barely even felt it. That was… probably bad. Definitely bad. Or maybe that was just his nerves again; one time he’d stumbled into a door half-asleep and he’d barely felt that, either, so this was probably—no, definitely just the same old, same old.

No, what he needed to be doing was his homework. He’d breezed through his composition and literature assignments during lunch yesterday and puzzled his way through history and science on the train ride home, which just left math. Yuuki dreaded math in the same way that some people dreaded going to the dentist or the doctor or to see their in-laws: he would rather the train derail at that exact moment and land him in the hospital for a month or two if it meant he didn’t have to crack open his textbook.

These hour-long train rides were precious. Yuuki had made the mistake of joining the volleyball team in high school—at the behest of his parents, who were insistent that he keep up the sport, especially when the school’s team was led by a coach with an Olympic medal hanging around his neck—when he would have preferred to do anything but, and now his days were so filled with volleyball, volleyball, and more volleyball that it was a wonder he even got to sleep anymore, much less keep up his studies or enjoy his fleeting youth.

Yuuki couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed a long, hot bath, much less the last time he’d gotten to sit down and _not_ wolf down a meal. He definitely didn’t remember the last time he’d gotten to relax on his days off, much less play a video game or hang out with friends he didn’t have time or enough charisma to be making.

He could feel the time slipping away—or maybe that was him, sliding out of his seat on the train, slowly drifting off again. He sighed; math was always one of his worst subjects. No one would bat an eye if he dealt with the assignment during his breaks at school, right? Maybe Suzui or her friend, the foreign-looking girl whose name didn’t match up with her face and so he never remembered it, would help him out; while he’d never ask for the answers outright, just knowing what formula to use where would be a big help and an enormous step up from blatant confusion. He could always just turn in something half-finished, anyway—Ms. Usami would probably give him half-marks and comment that she was glad he turned in anything at all—and if he caught Suzui on their way out of practice, that would be all for the better.

No, Yuuki was not blowing off his assignment to play games on his phone. Nope. Just… putting it off until later so that he didn’t fall asleep, scatter his papers across the train floor, and then have to turn them in not only half-done but covered in shoe prints.

Yeah, later. Later was good. Besides, wasn’t the blue light from screens supposed to keep people awake? That’s all this was. He’d spend ten minutes browsing 2chan and then get to work.

Fully convinced that he wouldn’t spend the next fifty minutes idly browsing for memes, he pulled out his phone. A gift from his parents for getting into Shujin Academy, there were already crumbs resting in the cracks of the case and smears all over the protector screen. Yuuki ran his sleeve over it, cleaning it off the best he could, aware that he’d only make a mess of it again very soon.

No new messages. No missed phone calls. The only three numbers on his contact list were his parents and emergency services. Yuuki had imagined high school life with a fancy new smartphone would be better than this; instead he had bruises over bruises, more homework than he could keep up with, and was probably developing an addiction to pain killers and caffeine—

 _2chan_ , he told himself sharply. And maybe he could check up on the idol scene. He’d missed Risette’s new single and Kanamin Kitchen’s latest album; the detective prince herself was supposedly a back-up singer for the first, and some trendy Vocabot songwriter living out in the boonies had composed most of the latter’s new music.

While he was at it, he could probably catch up with that Textter user that only posted pictures of her cat. The thing was cute and unnerving all at the same time; Yuuki never considered himself a cat person until he’d seen those blue eyes and promptly found himself bewitched.

Except, when he went to find his web browser, he found something strange: an app he didn’t recall seeing the first time he booted up his phone, and one he didn’t remember downloading.

He stared at it. It looked innocuous enough: a simple design of a blue background with a brass gear resting on top. It couldn’t be spam; that was email only, right? He ruled out a virus or malware—wasn’t that stuff supposed to be hidden where you couldn’t find it, so you never knew it was there?—and wondered whether the latest system update had included it, and he just hadn’t known.

Did phones even get system updates? Did they need them?

He cursed himself. No one ever talked about cyber security or stuff like this at school, not in the context of a phone at least, and it wasn’t like he could afford to replace the thing, either, in the unlikely event that it was a virus he was supposed to click on for it to work.

There was a word for viruses like that. A Trojan horse? Was that it?

But it wasn’t as if he had a lot to lose. He’d never quite figured out how to sync it up with his computer, and he never dared to check his email on it. The most any hacker would find is a lot of pictures of bruises—his own and some of Suzui’s, because she was the only one willing to let him document them—cataloged meticulously ever since his first petition to Principal Kobayakawa had failed miserably, and a lot of saved pictures of that blue-eyed cat.

Hell, maybe a hacker would help him out. How depraved would someone have to be to get off on bruised teenagers?

(How depraved would someone have to be to give teenagers bruises in the first place?)

Without a second thought, he pressed a thumb to it.

His phone shut off.

 

* * *

 

 

After spending several precious minutes of his train ride apologizing for cursing so loudly, collecting his—miraculously undamaged, save for the fact it was probably fried—phone from the floor, and actually considering taking a crack at his math homework, Yuuki turned one last look to the screen, hoping against hope that he’d really just turned it off by accident.

The screen flickered. Very faint lines of text began to scroll across it—code, maybe, or maybe it was just there to confuse the hell out him—before what could only be a start-up screen popped into view. It looked like it was pulled from that American game franchise, the one where computers were stupidly easy to hack into and usually connected to things like safes.

Well, from what he could remember, anyway. He’d just watched someone stream it once and couldn’t follow the jokes in the chat at all—but the text looked the same. A start-up screen. He caught a word that looked like ‘earth’ but that was it before it vanished, the screen flickering again like an old movie reel and a very distinct mop of curly black hair popped into view.

 _“_ _I didn’t mess it up, did I?”_ said the person the mop of hair was connected to. He was frowning down at something in his hands, and soft clicks of metal were the only indication that he was working on something. He grunted in exasperation. _“Just for a second, I thought—but maybe something blew. These wires all look fine, so something had to have blown, right? Please, don’t let it be one of the vacuum tubes… Morgana won’t forgive me if I busted something so expensive…”_

Yuuki glanced around the car. No one seemed to paying him any mind, much less the person on the other end of the video call, and he dared a tentative, “Hello?”

The person on his screen sat back with a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. He eyed whatever he’d been working on with the same look Yuuki gave differential equations, but he didn’t respond.

Yuuki tried again, a little louder. The girl in the seat across from him twitched her foot as if in agitation.

Still nothing. Maybe he busted his mic or the receiver or whatever when he dropped it, so it wasn’t picking up his voice this far away. He moved the phone closer, close enough to see the weird CG background—Was this guy on a movie set? Was that supposed to be a green screen?—comprised of incredibly fake plants and blocky-looking pictures hung on the wall and what looked like a clock with no face, and tried again.

Still nothing. The guy on the screen scratched his head, then the back of his neck, all the while twirling a screwdriver the same way some guys in Yuuki’s class did pens.

Busted mic, then. Great.

There was no button to end the call—Yuuki could just see the guy, from his head down to his collarbones, and the weird background that made his eyes hurt—so it must have been one of those swipe-menus, or something.

Yuuki pressed a finger to the top of his screen. There was an indication that his phone was reading the motion—a little bit of a depression right where his finger was, as if he were pushing on the surface of a balloon—and the guy on the other side looked up.

 _“_ _Huh? What’s—”_

He cut off with a thudding noise, gripping his head and hissing through his teeth. Yuuki saw a metal hand resting on the table, right where he’d stopped swiping.

He hit the guy. Yuuki, who could barely hit a pass when it came his way on the court, had just karate-chopped some weird video-caller with a weird robot hand it looked like he could control.

 _“_ _Ow,”_ said the guy, rubbing at the bump no doubt forming on his skull. One eye was screwed shut in pain; the other stared right at Yuuki, something bright and excited dancing in its depths. A smirk was forming on his lips. _“Damn it, that hurt, you know.”_

Yuuki tore the battery pack out of his phone, unconcerned with whether or not it was safe.

Math homework it was, then.

 

* * *

 

 

School that day was the same as always. Only Ms. Kawakami ever bothered to call on him, and the bags under her eyes did little to justify the enthusiasm she was trying to instill in her students for old, foreign cop-and-robber dramas. Arsene Lupin was a fun read; Yuuki didn’t understand why no one else seemed to like it, but maybe that was just him and his bruise collection talking.

If a phantom thief came from nowhere right that minute and stole away something important of Kamoshida’s—well, Yuuki wouldn’t stop them.

What? No, he’s not biased. Not at all. What gave you that idea?

Volleyball practice went the same as it always did: Yuuki struggled to keep up with one grueling exercise after another, earned the team a dozen extra laps around the school, and got hit several times by balls flung so hard they left yet more bruises. None of his teammates glared at him directly; last week Kamoshida had singled out Ohtani, and the week before that it had been Kawanabe. Everyone was going to get a turn, it felt like, so no one could hold grudges, even if they could gripe in the locker room while Kamoshida leered at their lanky frames from the doorway, sneering at every bruise he caused and every bit of childhood fat still clinging like moss to their thighs.

(It was, honestly, more worrisome than practice. No one knew what was going on in Kamoshida’s head, and no one wanted to—he could, after all, be glaring at them for daring to whine about practice in his presence, but sometimes some of the boys wondered under their breath if the coach was a closeted homo.

Yuuki hoped they were wrong.)

Yuuki trudged through his shower, trudged to the station, and very nearly collapsed into an empty seat, nibbling on the last bit of bread from the school store. His stomach grumbled; he thought of yet another stack of assignments in his school bag and very, very desperately wanted to hear Risette’s new single. Was the detective prince that good of a singer?

Too late, he remembered the video call from—was it that morning? It felt like forever ago—just that morning, and the stranger on the other side, who hadn’t heard a word he said but whom he hurt all the same.

He should apologize.

But how, with a busted mic?

Well, he could test that. He called his mom; she picked up on the second ring. “Yuuki?”

“Hey, mom,” he said, feeling foolish.

“Hey yourself,” she said, and he could hear pots clanging in the background. “You never call this late. Did something happen at school? Are you hurt? Do you need me to come and get you?”

He had a sinking feeling that if he mentioned the video call, or dropping his phone so hard he thought he broke it, she would snap like a wire. “Ah, no,” he said. “I was just wondering what’s for dinner? Practice really wore me out today, ha ha.”

She hummed. “Omelet rice. I was thinking of using the last of the eggs in the fridge.”

“That sounds good,” he said. His stomach rumbled. “Really good. I’ll see you when I get home.”

“Alright, Yuuki. Stay safe, okay?”

He promised he would; they traded goodbyes. As he hung up, he thought that his mic must not be busted after all; maybe the problem was on the other end. Maybe the guy couldn’t hear him because he didn’t have speakers.

Well, it sounded plausible enough, and the app was still there. Why an app would send him into a video call, he had no idea, but he was determined to apologize.

Yuuki stared as the app start-up screen faded away. This time the guy was gone, giving Yuuki a nice view of a bare wall, but there was static off in the distance.

“Hello?” he tried.

Nothing. He thought he heard humming.

“Hello?” he tried again. The guy next to him started up a muted Candy Crash game, as if giving him a hint; Yuuki dug through his schoolbag for his earbuds and didn’t bother to untangle them before shoving them in his ears.

It wasn’t static; something was sizzling. The guy’s humming was a lot clearer through the buds, but just barely; Yuuki could pick out snatches of a tune and what seemed to be ‘vacuum tube.’

If it was anything like this morning, the guy couldn’t hear him. Perfect. Yuuki swiped at his screen—the metal hand cut through the air, not unlike a ninja hand—but the humming didn’t stop. He couldn’t seem to move the screen at all, and waving his phone around in the air on a subway just seemed like a good cause for a casual police stop at the next station, so he wound up just listening for several minutes.

The guy wasn’t a great singer. He wasn’t even a good hummer. But the song was catchy and simple, and Yuuki found he could keep the beat and follow along, and just started swiping at the screen to the tune, watching the hand flail like a robot’s.

Kind of funny, actually.

 _“_ _Oh,”_ said the guy on the other side of the screen. It sounded like his mouth was full. _“It’s moving.”_

He popped into view, brushing back his curls to get a better look at the screen. His eyes were gray and still danced with the same mirth from this morning. _“Is my mystery guest back? Can you hear me?”_

“Yes, I can hear you,” Yuuki said, even though the guy seemed to ignore him to take several bites of his omelet rice.

 _“_ _Hm,”_ the guy said, after several minutes went by. Yuuki was too self-conscious to look like he was talking to himself on the train, and only said anything when he thought the timing was appropriate. It all flew over the guy’s head, or got lost on its way there, because now the guy was tapping at the screen with a finger.

 _“Weird,”_ he muttered, _“it was moving before, but I still can’t see anything.”_

Yuuki, exasperated and hungry, swiped at the guy’s chopsticks. They went flying; the guy nursed his hand and scowled. _“That’s twice today! Do you have something against me? What in the world did I ever do to you?”_

 _Install a weird app on my phone, that’s what you did,_ Yuuki thought. But this wasn’t what he came for; he was supposed to apologize.

Hard to do that when the other guy couldn’t see or hear him.

The guy shot the screen a hurt glance—nothing more than a pout and a twist of his lips—and darted off screen to get new chopsticks, taking his plate with him. _“It must be crossed wires somewhere,”_ the guy said to himself. _“I’ll have to ask Morgana, though I doubt he’ll know.”_

The guy was wary when he came back into view, his plate gone though he’d only taken a few bites out of it. Probably afraid that that would go flying too, and Yuuki didn’t begrudge him for that.

But the problem still remained: how could Yuuki apologize when the only way he could communicate was by controlling a metal hand? He didn’t know any JSL. The hand didn’t seem to have flexible fingers, either.

He’d hit him on the head before. Yuuki recalled banging his head on the kitchen table as a child; just having his mother run her hands over the bump made it feel better, and he assumed the same would go for the guy, too.

Besides, if Yuuki hurt him again he could just never use the weird app again. The guy on the other side would never have to know.

This time he just pressed a finger to the screen, right where—he assumed, anyway—he’d hit the guy this morning.

 _Sorry,_ he thought.

The one gray eye he could see went wide. _“Sorry?”_ he asked, as if reading Yuuki’s thoughts.

_Yeah, sorry._

It was far, far more than Yuuki would ever get from Kamoshida. At this point an apology wouldn’t cut it anymore; Yuuki only wanted the coach as far away from anymore students as possible.

But he couldn’t do a thing. The school would cover up any attempt to divulge the truth, and all anyone on any of the teams could see were their chances at the Olympics or nationals being washed down the drain the moment the truth came out. They’d all become the pariahs of the sport.

Yuuki didn’t want to become like Kamoshida. Yuuki didn’t want to be an asshole who took pleasure in meting out unjust punishments for the most trivial of things, and this was a good start.

 _“_ _I see,”_ the guy said. The one eye was closed. He was probably concentrating. _“First impressions aside, you’re a pretty good person. Pretty brave, too. I’ve got a feeling most people wouldn’t bother with… well, this.”_

Weird apps and weird guys and weird ways of communication. Yuuki moved his hand away from the screen, all the better to see the guy as he began to muse.

 _“There’s…_ _really someone over there? And you can hear me, but I can’t hear you—that’s odd, this was supposed to be two-way… But two-way doesn’t necessarily mean speaking and hearing, does it? Yeah, you’re pretty brave, Yuuki.”_

He started in his seat.

 _“_ _I hope you don’t mind if I call you that? It’s pretty fitting. Yuuki, courage… You have to be brave to listen to me talk to myself, right?”_

Oh, it was just a guess.

 _“_ _Are you still there?”_

As if he would leave now. As if he could leave now, with the other guy waiting, expectant. Yuuki touched the guy’s shoulder, and watched him sag with relief.

 _“_ _You_ are _still there,_ ” he said. “ _This thing actually works—I thought if it didn’t, I’d just give up, you know? I’m not that great with machines in the first place. I only built this because Morgana said it would give me something to do—but I never expected—never thought I’d get to talk to someone again, even if it’s mostly one-sided.”_

The guy was tearing up. Yuuki felt heat behind his eyes, and blinked rapidly.

 _“_ _There’s no one else here but Morgana and me,_ ” the guy admitted. “ _I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I don’t even know where I am, or where I came from, or who I used to be. Doesn’t that sound strange? I should know these kinds of things, right?”_

That did sound strange. Was this guy an amnesiac? Was he kidnapped? Was this Morgana guy responsible?

Dimly, he heard the train announcement. His stop already and he hadn’t touched any of his assignments. Kawakami was going to be disappointed if he didn’t do hers, at the very least.

He touched the screen again, trying to convey how urgently he needed to leave. _Sorry_ , he thought.

 _“_ _No, it’s alright_ , _”_ the guy said. _“Just… Will you come back? Please?”_

 _I promise_ , Yuuki thought, and reveled in the little smile blooming on the guy’s face.

 _“_ _It’s a promise,”_ he said, right before Yuuki shut his phone off, the only way he knew how to end the call.

 

* * *

 

 

Yuuki mused on the matter all throughout dinner and a second quick shower at home.

This could all be an elaborate prank played out by his middle school bullies—if Yuuki didn’t already know that he wasn’t worth this much effort. They’d gone out of their way to harass and ignore him in turn, and something about the situation just didn’t scream prank to him. The guy on the other side of the screen would have to be a damn good actor to play a part that convincingly, and Yuuki didn’t think ‘part of a prank on some loser, look it up on YouCube’ would look very good on a resume.

Not a prank, then, he decided as he worked on his assignments. Even math proved too little of a distraction from the guy; Yuuki, for once, finished everything, and wound up staring at the pile on his desk at one in the morning with awe before passing out on it.

He dreamed about Kamoshida, and Suzui, and a towering pile of math workbooks with the guy smiling and waiting for him at the top, guarded by a cat with bright blue eyes.

When his alarm went off four hours later, Yuuki dragged himself to the train station, all the while considering informing the police about the guy—but they’d take his phone, wouldn’t they, and ask all sorts of questions Yuuki wouldn’t be able to answer, and at the end of the day Kamoshida would think he’d gone to the police about the abuse he was suffering. He’d already gone to Kobayakawa, after all.

Besides, it sounded pretty crazy. Talking to an amnesiac through a smartphone app; communicating via thought, it seemed, since there weren’t any other options; the fact that the app could control a robotic hand. No one would believe him; Yuuki himself barely believed it.

When he checked in on the guy, he was asleep, the screen facing a bed Yuuki hadn’t seen before. There were dark circles under his eyes and a screwdriver still clutched in his hand.

Yuuki left him alone, and listened to music instead, playing some mindless game until he reached his stop.

 

* * *

 

 

“ _That’s right,”_ the guy said on Yuuki’s way home, _“I never introduced myself, did I?”_

Yuuki barely felt the latest round of welts on his arms when he saw this guy smile. There was someone out there who was happy just to see him, limitations aside, and Yuuki didn’t have to cause awkward pauses in the conversation to think of how to phrase his words; the weird telepathy would convey exactly what he meant or felt, and the guy talked enough for the both of them.

 _“_ _Ionasal kkll Preciel,”_ the guy sounded out, as if the words were foreign on his tongue, _“is what I think I’m called. It sounds funny, doesn’t it? It means something, I think, but I don’t know what.”_

Yuuki glanced down at an extra screen the guy added, where a series of responses popped up. The guy—there was no way Yuuki was going to attempt a name like that—had admitted to adding it, but that he wasn’t sure what would come up on the screen, citing another helpful tip from the still-mysterious Morgana. Apparently the screen could at least track the flow of their conversation.

 **It doesn’t really suit you** , Yuuki picked.

The guy laughed. _“Yeah, it doesn’t, does it? It sounds like a girl’s name. I don’t even like it. I’ve tried to get Morgana to call me ‘Ion,’ since it sounds more like a guy’s, but he won’t do it. Let me guess: you don’t like it either.”_

 **It doesn’t really suit you** , Yuuki picked again.

The guy laughed again. Humor danced in his eyes; Yuuki felt less like a bully and more like a friend teasing him for his parent’s poor choices.

 _“_ _Well, I’m sure we’ll think of something,”_ the guy said.

Yuuki agreed, and used the new screen to exit the app.

 

* * *

 

 

Yuuki continued to check on the guy on his train rides. The guy had a bad habit of staying up late working on additions to the monitor—what Yuuki’s screen was connected to that let him see the guy—and was almost always asleep during his early morning commutes, and always awake during his evening ones. Yuuki found he liked listening to the guy talk, even about nothing in particular, after one grueling practice after another. The bruise collection on his phone grew as the seasons turned hot, then cold. He held Suzui as she cried in his arms one night after practice, contemplated telling her to transfer, to find a better school with a slightly-less-than-exemplary volleyball team, to tell her friend what was really going on during the girl’s practice sessions.

He held his tongue. Suzui gained a constant thousand-yard stare the week the track team was disbanded, their ace’s leg splintered and broken in a dozen places.

“We can’t do anything, can we?” she asked him as they passed each other by in the hall.

He held his tongue, shook his head, and tried not to stare in disbelief at the bruises on her arms, very clearly in the shape of a man’s hand. The track ace was a hothead, sure, but Kamoshida had been goading him on since the beginning of the year. It was only a matter of time before he snapped; Yuuki wondered how long it would be before one of the volleyball members did, too.

He wondered if it would be him or Suzui first. He wondered what it would take, what Kamoshida’s abuse could possibly escalate to to make anyone consider—

 _“_ _Oh, Yuuki! You’re back!”_

He sighed, shook himself out of his thoughts, and selected, **I’m back.**

The guy on the other side of the screen very quickly became his savior. Whenever they talked on the train ride home, Yuuki always found his spirits lifted. He wound up with way more energy the longer he listened to the guy go on about schematics and vacuum tubes and his current culinary failure, and found that he didn’t even mind the usually daunting stack of homework.

He took to calling the guy Akira in his head: his own bright light, waiting for him to return, as clear and sure as the sun on a cloudless morning.

For the first time in—well, ever—he felt happy. Wanted. Useful for being more than just a punching bag to throw balls at, useful for being more than just a loser for bullies to stomp all over. He started checking out books from the library about electrical diagrams, if only so he could relate to the ones Akira showed him; he started staring at the police kiosks in the station, if only so he could hope one of them would wonder at the band-aid on his cheek, there for a week straight.

 

* * *

 

 

He met Morgana a week before Christmas.

Morgana was just a kid, it turned out, wearing a tiny, modified butler suit and a set of cat ears and a tail that matched his black hair and twitched like they were real. His eyes were blue, and Yuuki quickly found out he also had an attitude to match a cat’s.

 _“So you’re the one the lighthouse keeper’s been talking to,”_ Morgana said, after waltzing into Akira’s room like he owned it. _“_ _He’s out right now, by the way, so you’re just going to have to deal with me. Aren’t you lucky?”_

**Lucky’s one way of putting it.**

He laughed. It sounded like a cat’s, if a cat could laugh. _“I finally grace you with my presence, and you have the nerve to sass me! I think I like you. The lighthouse keeper certainly does.”_

He bowed, elegant and refined for such a small child. _“I am Morgana. One of the residents of this place, much like the lighthouse keeper. I took him in and gave him this house to use until he remembers who he is and what his purpose may be. It’s small, but it suits him rather well.”_

Well, it didn’t look like Akira ever lacked for anything except company.

But—Akira liked him? As a person?

 _“_ _Although, I am curious,”_ Morgana continued, _“as to why you haven’t been utilizing all the devices at your disposal. The sharl sanctuary is a must if the lighthouse keeper is ever going to recover his memories, you know, so why haven’t you been using it?”_

The what sanctuary?

A roll of the eyes. _“The sharl sanctuary. Data from your world can cross over here—as sharls, spirits who will help the lighthouse keeper remember who he is. Don’t tell me he didn’t tell you?”_

It must have been on one of those days when Yuuki had found it hard to concentrate. There were so many new things connected to the monitor now that he found it hard to keep track; Morgana pushed one of them into view—what looked like a lightning rod with a coil wrapped around it—and said, _“There must be some way for you to gather data. A picture, maybe—no, actually, that should work just fine! Just use this, take a picture, and voila! You’ll have yourself a sharl army in no time.”_

**And if I don’t want a sharl army?**

_“_ _He’s not going to be happy staying cooped up like this,”_ Morgana said. His ears drooped. _“He already isn’t; he was so happy just to find out that this monitor connected him to someone,_ _and since regaining his memories may be the key to help him return home…_ _”_ He perked up. _“But, if you really don’t want to, I guess I can just take these gifts back! Way to save me money, monitor!”_

So Akira wasn’t happy; that much was obvious. He was always so glad when Yuuki dropped in, even if it was only for an hour a day, but it was obviously bothering him to just repeat the same dry, old topics over and over again.

If Yuuki wanted to be a really good person, he’d help Akira out. That’s what friends did for each other, right? **No, I’ll do it.**

 _“_ _Good to hear! So, let’s test it out first. Try taking a picture of something!”_

So Yuuki tried. He took photos of the other train riders, the hand grips swaying over the tops of the seats, a scuff of dirt on the floor. He went home and tried his textbooks, his dinner, the Christmas lights in the lobby of his apartment building.

None of it produced a sharl.

 _“_ _There’s got to be something else,”_ Morgana kept prodding. Yuuki wondered how long Akira planned to be out. _“Something that’s just data!_ _It’d be way easier to transmit that!_ _”_

… Which wasn’t very helpful at all. Yuuki tried taking pictures of his computer, of an SD card, of his mother’s phone charging on the low table in the living room.

Nothing.

In a fit of frustration, he turned the bottle of shampoo in the bathroom around and photographed the bar code on the back—that was as close to ‘pure data’ as he could get, without scanning a QR code or something similar—and in a flash of bright light, a fairy appeared on the screen.

 _What the hell_ , he thought. But Morgana preened and praised him for not completely screwing up such simple instructions, sent the sharl up into Akira’s attic, and promised Yuuki those gifts if he could manage another nine sharls by the end of the week.

Well, he had nothing better to do for the holidays.

 

* * *

 

 

Nine sharls, one very confused Akira, and a proud Morgana later had Yuuki sitting in his room on Christmas Eve glued to his phone.

Akira had decorated his room for the holidays—glow-in-the-dark stars glittered along the ceiling in place of Christmas lights, and a model replica of Tokyo Tower sat on the floor, a light bulb screwed into the top and an origami star carefully folded to cover it—and now he sat at his desk, staring down at the card Morgana had left the last time he was here.

 _“He said it’s for both of us,”_ Akira said, examining it on all sides. There was nothing of note on it, just blank red paper. _“But I don’t see how._ _Maybe it’s something you can use?”_

There were no prompts. Yuuki couldn’t respond, but maybe he could try touching it? It wouldn’t hurt to try, right?

So he did; some kind of pod wrapped around him and Akira. Akira barely had time to question it before the screen went dark, and when the lights came on again they were in a traditionally-decorated cafe, complete with a tree in the corner and fake presents at its base.

 _“_ _That was weird_ , _”_ commented Akira, frowning at their new surroundings. He reached for the cup on the table; it didn’t budge. _“A change of scenery is nice, but what was that?”_

It _was_ strange.

 _“_ _Well, I guess we’ll figure it out. Is that a Christmas tree? I tried my best, but there aren’t any trees where Morgana and I live. It’s all metal.”_

Yuuki remembered that conversation. Akira had mentioned harvesting coils of wire out of vacuum tubes growing out of the ground. Yuuki longed to see it, but the monitor wasn’t very mobile. The most it could do now was turn.

 **I like your tower more** , he picked. Why gripe about him not having a tree, when Yuuki could go down to any shop on Central Street to find one, and Akira couldn’t?

Akira grinned at him. _“The light bulb was my idea. I guess once Christmas is over I can use it as a reading lamp, if I ever find anything to read.”_

Yuuki hoped taking pictures of the bar codes on books would do the trick.

(It didn’t, but the sharls were certainly happy.)

 

* * *

 

 

It turned out Morgana ran a trading shop of some kind. Akira would forage for things to trade, and brought books and foodstuffs back with him. Yuuki supposed it took his mind off the memories they were both beginning to uncover; the first one had been especially hard to watch, as the actions of the very people Akira was supposed to entrust himself to quickly turned anything but reassuring. Yuuki would always remember the way Akira gripped at his shirt after that memory, as if he could feel phantom hands ripping it off of him all over again.

Bruises were nothing compared to that.

But Akira steeled himself; he started sewing sets of clothing, or crafting accessories, or cooking a recipe one memory or another reminded him of. Morgana would pop in on occasion, congratulate Yuuki on his progress, tease him a little about Akira, and then leave.

The sharls, up in their sanctuary, played little games with each other, or sang songs or napped. They didn’t seem to need to eat, and Yuuki thanked the gods for that as their numbers swelled.

The Akira in the memories fought and hid and wept in turn; he was strangely clumsy, and couldn’t cook to save his life, and made a lot of decisions that were probably selfish.

The Akira Yuuki could talk to was almost the exact opposite, as if he were trying to make up for all of his past failings unconsciously; even the good memories tended to end on one sour note or another, and Akira tended to go quiet after them.

 _“_ _Is it true?”_ he asked, over and over. _“Did I really do that?”_

Yuuki never knew. **I guess we’ll find out** , he always picked.

 _“_ _Yeah,”_ Akira said. _“I guess we will.”_


	2. The Second Year

It happened at the start of the new school year.

Yuuki was a junior now, and still on the volleyball team, which had practice nearly every day of the very short break that Kamoshida could strong-arm the gym for. Spring showers weren’t uncommon, but while Yuuki had managed to remember his umbrella last year on the off chance it did rain, he started forgetting it more and more often, sure that if he just got to the train station before it started to pour, he’d be fine.

And he was, until he went home one evening and the rain caught him unaware only a block away from his apartment. He dumped his phone into his schoolbag, hugged it tight to his chest, and plowed through the downpour; by the time he got home his uniform was drenched and he was shivering like a chihuahua in January.

He rushed for the bathroom—giving his mother a cursory greeting before she started complaining that he was dripping on her floor—dropped his bag by the sink, and started peeling his uniform off. His blazer got caught on his wrists. The suspenders refused to unhook from his pants. His socks squelched with every tiny step he took to wrest one, then the other off of himself, and when he nearly fell over, bent down and peeled those off, too; it made the blood rush to his ears, and he leaned against the washing machine and willed the lightheadedness away.

His mother opened the bathroom door just as he was lifting his shirt over his stomach; the stack of towels she held dropped to the floor as they stared at each other. It was only then that Yuuki remembered the bruise on his back, the one his mother got an eyeful of, the one that was turning a nice shade of puke-green.

“Mom, knock!” he admonished, yanking his shirt back down.

“Are you trying to hide it from me?” she shrieked. She didn’t try to see it again, didn’t try to pull his shirt off of him to see the rest—not that she would need to, with the fabric as soaked as it was—but started yelling. “Is this what you’ve been doing? Fighting? Are you being bullied? Is someone threatening you? No one’s taking advantage of you, are they?”

“No one’s doing—”

“The hell they are, Yuuki! Look at you! You’re black and blue all over!” This time she did take him by the arm, lifting it up to inspect the bruises under his shirt. “I thought you’d been acting strange lately! What is it, Yuuki? Is it drugs? An abusive girlfriend? A gang?”

“God, Mom, no—”

“Then where did these come from?” she shrieked again, and shook his arm. His muscles, usually in a distant fugue after his talks with Akira, screamed in agony.

He knew better than to cry out. He knew better than to give her more ammunition.

“I work and work and you come home like this! Shujin is a good school, Yuuki! You don’t want to throw your chances at a good college down the drain, do you? You don’t want to be like that delinquent boy, do you, throwing everything you have away for a brief high, do you?”

She was red in the face, livid despite the fact that he’d barely said a word, and anything he did say sailed right over her head as if he never said it at all.

 _Maybe_ he’d been looking at his phone too often. _Maybe_ he’d been staying up late into the night studying one too many nights a week. _Maybe_ he’d been talking less and staying out of her way when she was home so as to not bother her too much, stressed and overworked as she and his father were.

Shujin was a good school, and good schools cost money—far more money than the Mishimas made. They were betting on him landing a good job out of a good college just based on a letter of recommendation from Kamoshida; they were betting on all their hard work paying off in the end.

Worst of all: they knew about the track team, which meant they had to know about Kamoshida, and they didn’t care.

She sent him to bed without dinner or a shower, promising only that they’d talk about this later with his father around, which just meant both of them would gang up on him.

He didn’t understand; why was he the bad guy just for having a bunch of bruises? Why was he the bad guy for enjoying a brief seminar on coding, or checking out science books from the library?

 _“_ _Oh, Yuuki! You’re back!”_ Akira, at least, was always happy to see him, even if he would never know Yuuki was currently holding back tears and cocooned in his blankets in a dark room with one too many protein bar wrappers sitting in his trash can. _“That was fast. Did you want to talk again?”_

Akira waited, as patient as a saint, as Yuuki navigated one of the other screens connected to his monitor. This one was filled with preprogrammed requests where he could ask Akira to make something in particular or ask about his day; Akira had mentioned a picture book he was working on a month ago, idly wondering if he could put the pictures right into the screen, and most of his technobabble had gone over Yuuki’s head.

Now, though, he needed a distraction. **Tell me a story.**

Akira’s eyes widened. _“Are you sure? I don’t think I’m that great of a story-teller.”_

He waited a moment. Usually Yuuki would tap his head to get his baser feelings across; tonight he didn’t want Akira to know just how cowardly Yuuki really was.

But Akira turned off his lights, rotated the monitor, and settled into bed. _“Once upon a time,”_ he began, and Yuuki listened to him talk until he fell asleep.

He thought he heard Akira tell him good night.

The next day, Shiho Suzui jumped off of Shujin’s roof.

 

* * *

 

 

Shiho Suzui left a blatant tell-all of a suicide note. She wasn’t dead, but her parents discovered it anyway and promptly brought all hell down on the school; most of the other girl’s parents got in on it, and Suzui’s friend—the foreign-looking girl with naturally blonde hair, of all things—got her own parents in on it, too. It wasn’t just a school scandal; Takamaki’s parents made it a national scandal.

Suddenly Shujin wasn’t such a good school anymore.

With the volleyball program shut down, Yuuki’s bruises vanished over a few weeks, but the talks his parents had after he went to bed changed from ‘what if he’s being blackmailed’ to ‘what if he needs to change schools.’ All of this was for his future, after all, and if the school was tainted so were its alumni, and Yuuki’s prospects supposedly dropped overnight.

But they didn’t say a word to him about it. Yuuki’s mother didn’t even ask what he was staying so late at school for, now that volleyball practice was indefinitely canceled.

(He was seeing a counselor one day a week and catching up on his schoolwork the rest, he’d say if she asked, but she never did. That rankled him more than the tongue-lashing in the bathroom, or maybe because of it; surely a month from now she would come to him with the rest of his high school career meticulously planned out and balk at the idea that he’d already planned it himself.)

Yuuki’s father made an attempt. “You alright, son?” he asked one day, when his mother was out.

It was so out of the blue Yuuki wondered if it was some kind of trick. Anything he said would get back to his mother, anyway. Saying he was glad it was over would be taken to mean that he was glad he didn’t have volleyball to ensure his future anymore, and saying he was fine or not fine would be taken to mean that volleyball wasn’t the cause of the problem.

It wasn’t, he was realizing. It was everything, all of it, and the only thing keeping him from following in Suzui’s footsteps was Akira, who needed him more than anyone ever had before.

So Yuuki brushed his father’s hand and concern off and said, “I need to study,” and retreated to his room.

 

* * *

 

 

“Hey, Takamaki,” he asked a week later, in the break between classes. He pretended that every eye still in the room wasn’t trained on them and every ear straining for whatever juicy gossip they were sure to talk about.

“Oh, hey,” said Takamaki, and smiled like her eyes weren’t puffy and swollen from days of on-and-off crying. She’d come into class and put on a brave face under layers of concealer, but Yuuki could tell that she was wavering some days—sometimes she would dart out of the room in the middle of a lesson, blinking furiously—and even now, her smile shook. It looked forced. Fake.

Did she know? Was that why she couldn’t look him in the eye, or was it because of something else?

“Uh, Mishima, right?” she asked. “What’s up?”

“Well, uh,” he said, trying to find the words he’d been rehearsing in his head all day. That they’d escape him now, of all times, just wasn’t fair. “I—um, I was just wondering—you know, how Suzui’s doing?”

“Shiho?”

“A-and you, too,” he added.

“Oh,” Takamaki said. Her eyes widened; they were blue like the ocean in those vacation pamphlets his parents sometimes got in the mail, vivid and clear, and Yuuki couldn’t look in them for long. “I—well, I could be better. But Shiho’s—” she sniffed, “she’s alive. She made it. I…”

Yuuki waited for her to continue, too afraid of his bumbling tongue to dare speaking.

(The rest of the class waited for her to continue, too, conversations drawn down into hushed whispers that Takamaki’s voice cut over like a crack of thunder.)

“Come with me today!” Takamaki declared, and Yuuki took a step back at the sheer force of will in her words and the brilliance of her pearly-white smile. “You and Shiho used to talk, right? You should stop by and visit her, too! I’m sure she’ll love the extra company!”

“Uh,” Yuuki said, “sure.”

“Great! Meet me at the gate after school, okay?”

“Sure,” he said, and didn’t ask how long visiting hours were. Without volleyball, he and his mother were wandering into each other on a daily basis: far more than Yuuki was used to, and he was getting the vague suspicion she was doing it on purpose. He saw her eye him up whenever he passed by the kitchen; his nerves flared up whenever he was in the bath and she came home; he swore he could feel her hovering outside of his door for hours, as if waiting to barge in at the slightest suspicious noise.

The less he was in that apartment, the better. Maybe his mother would get the hint and go back to being a workaholic.

So he let Takamaki take him to a ward in Tokyo with a hospital he recognized from the news, her hair shoved in his face and smelling of some fruit he couldn’t recognize, her profile sad but hopeful.

It was for Suzui’s sake, he told himself as his hand ran over the sides of his phone nestled in his pocket. Takamaki was only ever bubbly around Suzui—the rest of the time, she was just a loner, like he was—to the point that Yuuki and most of the student body thought there was something more there, something the two of them didn’t dare to share.

That was alright. Kamoshida had leered at everyone on his teams; why couldn’t Takamaki and Suzui have their close friendship? Why did everyone have to wonder aloud as if it was their business?

At their next-to-last stop, a crowd of businessmen sweaty from the spring warmth in their suits crammed into the car. Takamaki was pushed into him bodily, her schoolbag dropping from her shoulder to the crook of her elbow.

“Sorry,” she said with a wince as someone stepped on their feet.

“It’s okay,” Yuuki said, and wondered why he didn’t feel a thing other than his panicked nerves set alight at the suddenness of it all. Takamaki was a part-time model; he should be excited, shouldn’t he?

She pushed herself upright and out of his space before hugging her bag and glaring at the crowd; no one challenged her stare or even met it, and Yuuki sighed inwardly.

As much as he wanted to be out of the apartment, standing around with Takamaki wasn’t much better. He kept wondering when she would say something—anything at all—about Suzui or Kamoshida, but she did nothing more than take him by the arm and drag him out of the train and into the hospital, only stopping to talk to the nurse at the desk to get their passes.

Well, okay. So she wanted to keep it private—that was fine. No doubt as soon as they got to Suzui she’d start screaming at him, and then Suzui would scream too, and they both would probably start crying—

“Mishima?”

With a jolt, he realized he’d been released. Takamaki was sitting in a chair looking at everything but him, and from the bed beside it Suzui was staring at him, her eyes wide and her hair limp and draping over her shoulders.

“Ann, why—” she started to ask, but cut off with a cough.

“He wanted to come and see you,” Takamaki told her, pouring her a drink out of a bottle in her bag. It fizzed and popped and Yuuki ran his tongue over his teeth, wondering when the last time he’d drunk something was. At lunch?

Suzui took a sip and said, “You shouldn’t be sneaking this in like that, you know.”

“It’s just a teeny bottle. If you don’t want any more, Mishima can have it.”

“That’s fine,” said Suzui, hands clenched around her cup.

“Do you want me to do your hair?”

“I’d like that,” was the response. Yuuki shuffled in place, accepting the bottle of Spirit as if it were a live snake, now more unsure than ever; rather than screaming or crying, they were both acting as if he just wasn’t there—or rather, as if he was only part of the scenery.

It did nothing to quell the squirming nerves in his gut. Bile burned up his throat.

He shoved the bottle in his schoolbag and took in Suzui’s hospital room: plain and sterile with a sink in the front of the room by a TV mounted on the wall, day-old flowers at her bedside, the vase a deep green. Two other beds sat on either side of her own, their curtained partitions pulled open without occupants.

Yuuki fought the urge to lie on one of them, shove in his earbuds, and forget the world existed; instead, as Takamaki brushed Suzui’s hair and pulled it into a low ponytail, he just stood there and stared. Suzui stared back, her cup of soda nearly forgotten.

She tried to smile at him, but it fell flat; a slight quirk of the lips more than anything, but he didn’t have the courage to try it back.

This was his fault.

That meant he had to fix it, right? But what could he say—what could he ever possibly say to fix this? Where would his apologies even start?

No, first he should say he’s glad she’s alright—alive and not quite whole, but alright—before getting into Kamoshida and starting up a pity party. That was what normal people did, right? Talk about the person they’re visiting before making the whole conversation about themselves?

“Um, Mishima,” Suzui said, before he could decide, “thanks for visiting.”

“Uh,” he said, “right.”

“Right!” Takamaki declared with a slight tug to Suzui’s hair. “And now, I’m off to get snacks! Anything you want, Shiho?”

“Chocolate,” Suzui said, “and some plum juice.”

“And you, Mishima?”

He shook his head. He’d already made Takamaki drag him here; he wasn’t about to ask her to buy him snacks, too. “I’m fine.”

Takamaki raised a brow at that, but smiled back at Suzui, grabbed up her bag, and left. In the ensuing silence, the only thing Yuuki could hear was the hissing of Suzui’s drink and the blood rushing through his ears, his heartbeat so loud he was sure that it thrummed through the room like a bass line.

Suzui’s voice, in contrast, was so thin it could have gotten lost beneath it. “Are you okay, Mishima?”

 _No_ , he wanted to say. He was tired of feeling like everything was his fault; but this in particular _was_ his fault, and he surely had no right to complain about it.

He should say yes. He should say that his mother wasn’t bothering him, or that his grades weren’t suffering anymore because he could actually focus on schoolwork without hours of volleyball practice everyday, or that he didn’t feel lonelier than ever without the team suffering by his side. He shouldn’t say that the only thing he looked forward to was talking to a boy in an app on his phone, that half the time just listening to Akira ramble on made Yuuki wonder if that was what it was like to have a friend.

Someone he could talk to, who would visit him when he was sick, who would sneak bottles of soda and bags of snacks into his hospital room.

(Who would he have, if that was him on that bed?)

“I’m okay,” he settled for. It wasn’t quite a lie and it wasn’t quite the truth—but Suzui didn’t need to know that. “I just—I mean, I, um…”

He should never have mentioned he wanted to come here. He should have written a letter and asked Takamaki to deliver it, not caring if she read it en route or not. He should never have joined the damn team in the first place, if he knew this was how it was going to end: with him standing awkwardly in front of a girl he threw under the bus to save his own skin. He should have been braver. He should have lived up to his name.

“I’m sorry,” Yuuki said, softly enough that, were it not for Suzui’s drained cup, the soda would have drowned it out.

“Mishima?”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. The second time was no easier than the first, but he put more force into it that time so he wouldn’t have to say it a third.

“What for?”

Akira called him brave. Being brave would have meant not cowing to each and every one of Kamoshida’s threats. Being brave would have meant going to the cops enough that they couldn’t ignore him until they got off their asses and did their jobs.

Yuuki being brave would have meant Suzui wouldn’t be sitting in a hospital bed, being sneaked soda like it was a luxury.

“Everything,” he said.

“Everything?” Suzui asked.

Yuuki, out of words, only nodded.

Thankfully, Suzui didn’t ask for further explanation.

He fled as soon as he could to a nearby park, plugged in his earbuds, and started up the app.

 

* * *

 

 

Suzui got better, and Yuuki became more withdrawn.

He dared to make his own Textter account. If the only thing he ever posted was pictures of bar codes, no one cared, but the girl with the blue-eyed cat liked every single one, and they wound up chatting on occasion about photography, of all things. When he found out she was a programmer, he all but spammed her inbox with messages to teach him, because surely something he picked up here would help out Akira in the long run, and Akira would smile at him, and be grateful, and would—

He shut that fantasy down faster than it popped up.

 _“But I’m a great dancer!”_ Akira argued after watching a memory of himself trying—and failing—to learn a basic series of steps. _“I dance all the time! Just ask Morgana!”_

 **I will** , Yuuki said. **But…**

 _“Yeah, I don’t like it either_ , _”_ he sighed. _“He could’ve been nicer, but I didn’t need to snap at him, did I? He was only trying to help…”_

**We’ll see.**

_“Yeah. Will I see you later, Yuuki?”_

**Of course.**

He knew it was unhealthy. Akira was completely dependent on him for social interaction and for finding out who he really was; Yuuki could admit to waiting to watch a new memory when it looked like Akira might start distancing himself from Yuuki, only to swoop in with some new-old disaster to uncover and reap the feeling comforting Akira gave him.

For once, he was wanted, and for being nothing but himself.

He didn’t want to give that up.

 

* * *

 

 

Summer rolled around. Yuuki lied to his counselor long enough for the man to declare that he need not see him anymore despite the distrust swimming in his eyes, Morgana gave him a new card, and the girl with the blue-eyed cat stopped posting. Yuuki didn’t know if it was because she was grounded, or because her family went on a trip, or because something serious happened, but he missed her; she was the only person he could talk to about coding. She never hesitated to call him an amateur, or an NPC, or any number of other nicknames she thought fit him best while making sure he knew she was only teasing.

 _It hurts to be made fun of_ _,_ she admitted the night before she disappeared, long after he’d gone to bed. _And it hurts to hear them in your head long after they’re done with you. You’re just a distraction to them; they don’t realize that they’re deep under your skin, like an itch you can never scratch, for the rest of your days. You hope they’ll topple off the pedestal they’re on and sit around waiting to relish the chance to laugh but they never do. They never do._

And it’s not fair, he heard. It went untyped and therefore unspoken, but he heard it all the same. His bullies were on fast tracks to cushy salaried jobs, probably, and Kamoshida had run amok long enough that he’d probably—definitely, by the looks of the ongoing investigation—scarred more than his fair share of hopeful athletes and scared them away from sports forever. Even Akira, it was turning out, had people more than willing to use him and throw him away.

Morgana’s newest card took them to a beach. Akira was disappointed when he tried to dip his feet in the surf and found that he couldn’t feel a thing, and when he tried to collect some of the seashells and starfish littering the sands, his hands phased right through them.

It was a perfect beach day, otherwise: the sky was clear and cloudless and as blue as Morgana’s eyes, and the sea stretched out crystal-clear to the horizon, and the sand was a pretty—if blinding—white that reminded Yuuki of snow.

It was perfect, but Akira sat on his haunches, stared out at the endless expanse in front of him, and cried.

Yuuki, despite the prompts he was given, didn’t say a word, even when Akira turned back to him with a tear-stained, red-faced, runny-nose countenance. His voice was hoarse and he hiccuped his way through a request to go back to his room.

Yuuki complied.

 

* * *

 

 

Yuuki spent the rest of summer in a funk.

The app drained his phone battery, so he never dared to use it unless he was at home in the apartment or on the train. All of the bar code pictures he would collect over the course of the day made it into the app with no trouble at all, so he spent most of his time wandering Tokyo’s many convenience stores and gift shops taking photos. The clerks eyed him if he didn’t buy anything, so he always wound up with a cheap, 100-yen novelty item or popsicle, something he could eat and throw away or just shove in his pocket.

Sometimes he went to visit Suzui; she was always happy to see him and it made his chest ache every time to watch her put on the same brave front she had when she was still in school, that stilted first meeting in the hospital going unspoken the farther they got away from it.

Takamaki had, somehow or other, roped Sakamoto into visiting for the group therapy sessions around the same time she’d dragged Yuuki in for a visit. Most of the time, Suzui remarked, he just sat there with a scowl on his face, his bad leg bouncing as if he were wishing he was running as far as he could from the place.

Yuuki knew the feeling. Being dissected like that by someone who had no idea what you’d been through was awful; being looked at like he was a marvel for surviving it was just plain irritating.

(Walking into Suzui’s room one day to find all three of them there, snacks spread out all over Suzui’s bed tray, was outright surprising; Yuuki hadn’t thought they were that close.)

He wound up taking her to one therapy class after another or sitting with her in her room and enjoying the mindless noise of the TV whenever Takamaki wasn't there; one day there was a news segment about a famous artist, and Suzui tilted her head.

“There’s an art student in one of my therapy classes,” she said, as they watched Madarame smile and affect sadness in turn. There was something behind the old man’s tears other than concern for his remaining student, Yuuki thought, but he couldn’t guess what.

“I guess what he’s in for is normal for artists,” she continued when Yuuki didn’t say anything. “But he’s so young, you know? I don’t think it’s normal for kids our age to be collapsing from exhaustion, especially when their teachers are as famous as Madarame is.”

Oh, that’s what it was. Madarame was just another Kamoshida, and of course Suzui would figure it out.

“And he doesn’t know how to talk to anyone. Can you believe that, Mishima? He just sits there, and stares. When he’s in my art therapy class, he just doodles with fingerpaints. I tried giving him a compliment once, and he shuddered so bad I thought he was having a seizure. He told me his painting wasn’t even worth the match it would take to light it on fire; can you believe that, Mishima?”

Suzui was staring right at him, the tears in her eyes waiting to overflow. Her hands were clenched into fists, gripping at her sheets like lifelines. Maybe they were.

For some reason, he could see the prompts; the words she most wanted to hear and the words she didn’t want to hear swam before him. He picked one.

“Sounds like he needs a friend,” he said. “Someone to show him what really bad art looks like.”

Suzui laughed, a thin and watery sound. A few tears slipped down her cheeks. “I’m not that bad,” she protested.

“No, but you know someone who is,” he said, with a slight grin to show he was teasing. It was the running joke between Suzui and Takamaki that Takamaki just couldn’t draw to save her life, no matter how much her artwork improved.

She laughed some more, and didn’t notice when he changed the channel. When he left they were bored of cartoons, and Suzui made him promise to come back next week, as she always did.

He had nothing better to do, so he did.

 

* * *

 

 

Kitagawa was a stick of a boy; even malnourished, he managed to hit six feet and was likely to keep growing. Yuuki had to strain his neck to look at him whenever he stood up, but most of the time he was hunched over a table in the rec room, his shoulder blades sharp under his shirt.

Yuuki liked to watch them move, when Kitagawa was too focused to notice anyone else around him. Yuuki would help Suzui into her chair, let Sakamoto or Takamaki take another seat if they were there, and then watch the rise and fall of bone the same way he watched Akira cook or craft.

He could understand how some people claimed man was meant to have wings. Yuuki could practically see them, invisible but pumping, keeping Kitagawa from falling out of his chair at every broad stroke of his hand; clearly he wasn’t used to fingerpainting, not even after a couple of weeks of it, but Yuuki never said a thing, letting Suzui and her friends do all the worrying.

He was just here to kill time, after all. Worrying over other people besides Akira wasn’t his job, and he wasn’t about to butt in on their affairs, either. He could visit and shoot the breeze for a while, but the deep conversations left them all too pained—left Yuuki a writhing, squirming mess on the inside—for Yuuki to deal with.

All the same, he couldn’t stand it.

He couldn’t stand it when the comments about Kamoshida started cropping up.

He couldn’t stand it when Kitagawa shared a fingerpainting of a stylized, demonic Kamoshida and actually looked to be basking in Sakamoto’s crows of laughter.

He couldn’t stand it when they started to talk, and he was the one left to the side, too afraid to chime in.

 

* * *

 

 

When school resumed, all anyone could talk about was the Madarame scandal and a mafioso likened, more often than not, to a pig. The student council president was arrested for working with the mafia, or for trafficking drugs, or for cheating on her entrance exams, or for prostituting herself for letters of recommendation. The rumors varied depending on how much the gossiper hated her; Yuuki couldn’t bring himself to believe a single one.

The principal got hit by a truck on his way to the police station, and the tell-all note in his pocket almost—almost—got Nijima out of jail, until she admitted to working with the mafia of her own volition. The principal may have pushed her to do something about the trafficking, but she was the one who decided to join up to get more dirt on the mob boss.

The police came back to school. Yuuki didn’t know a thing and told them so.

 

* * *

 

 

Akira did not get progressively worse as the rest of the year went by. Instead he reacted to whatever new memory surfaced and took it in stride to go about the rest of his day.

 _“I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s like it’s not even happening to me,”_ Akira said one day. _“It’s like it’s happening to someone else who looks like me, and I’m just watching him make all of these stupid mistakes and getting into worse trouble than before while wishing I could stop it.”_

Yuuki would do anything to get Akira to smile the way he had when they first met. The light wasn’t going out in Akira’s eyes, but he frowned more often than not as one truth after another gave way to one mystery after another. Yuuki could always just delay the next memory, as he had in the beginning, but he was starting to realize that that wouldn’t make Akira happy.

Akira needed to find out the truth; Yuuki was his only means to do so. Yuuki could control everything Akira did, down to what he’d make for dinner—and while the idea was tempting, he could see Suzui’s limp body resting on the courtyard lawn, or Sakamoto’s scars running up his leg, or Kitagawa’s ribs poking through his shirt, or Nijima’s hands bound together with handcuffs.

That was what absolute control did to someone. It tore them apart from the inside out, destroyed any chance of their hopes and dreams coming true, and then left them by the roadside for everyone else to stare and snicker at and gossip about.

Akira needed to be his own person, independent of Yuuki. Yuuki had survived before Akira came along, and he could survive without Akira, too. He shouldn’t need to depend on him. He shouldn’t need to use seeing him as an excuse not to do his homework, or to avoid his parents, or even to avoid Suzui and his growing circle of maybe-friends.

Whether he liked it or not, Yuuki needed to do what was best for Akira, and what was best was unlocking more of his memories.

 

* * *

 

 

As election day grew closer and as the public began to outcry as a fast-food company exec took a step into the political realm, Yuuki and Akira uncovered the worst of the memories: a second person like Akira, pulled from another dimension altogether and forced to act as a computer server.

It was the only comparison Yuuki could make. The machines that let even ordinary citizens on Akira’s strange planet perform the most basic of tasks were apparently all running because of a boy in a tank somewhere, processing all of the requests the same way Yuuki’s computer’s motherboard did.

 _“_ _Someone else like me,_ _”_ Akira mused. He was smiling again, finally, but it dropped as quickly as it came. _“Do you think we helped him? Do you think I took his place, and that this is inside his tank?”_

 **I don’t know** , Yuuki picked.

 _“_ _Still,”_ he sighed, _“to think the Cielnotron server was a person…”_

**I don’t like it either.**

_“_ _Yeah,”_ Akira said, _“me neither.”_

 

* * *

 

 

A few days after Morgana paid him another visit.

 _“You’ve been making progress, I hear,”_ he said, with a hint of pride. _“Wonderful work as always, monitor!”_

**How come you never call me by name?**

_“Because I don’t know it!”_ Morgana laughed. _“There’s no point in calling you a name if it’s not your real one! Besides, you haven’t really impressed me yet!”_

**Impressed you?**

Another laugh. _“Gather some more sharls and I’ll give you another reward. How does that sound?”_

 **Awful. Ion** —Akira— **doesn’t like the cards.**

_“_ _Wait, really?”_

**They aren’t real, and that makes him sad.**

The boy thought for a while, then grinned. _“Maybe you two just aren’t close enough yet. You’d better work on that, too!”_

He skipped away before Yuuki could fully process his words.

By the time he did, his stop had arrived.

 

* * *

 

 

“How distasteful,” Kitagawa said. From where he was sitting at the table, he had a full view of the TV in the corner; the others were spread out and bent over their work. Sakamoto was hogging all of the yellow paint, Takamaki all the red and pink, and Kitagawa, long finished, had used up all of the blue. Yuuki made due with green and a bit of black, trying to capture the memory of Akira in a green peacoat, looking smart as he read aloud from a mystery novel.

“Is it really that bad?” Suzui frowned. She turned her fingerpainting around and around, trying to see what Kitagawa did, but the taller boy shook his head.

“I meant the news,” he elaborated. “If even the ones we are supposed to entrust our country to are rotten at the core, how can we trust anyone to lead us?”

“I think your painting looks great, Shiho,” Takamaki said, smearing paint on her forehead as she brushed her hair out of her eyes.

Yuuki turned to catch the reel at the bottom of the screen: Scandal erupts around two major candidates for prime minister, details at eleven.

It was Sakamoto who asked, “What happened now?”

“A couple has accused him of kidnapping their son, it seems,” Kitagawa paraphrased. “Her son stopped this man from committing sexual assault and was vindicated for assault himself, then went missing. They’re showing his picture.”

Kitagawa lifted his hands into the familiar frame he always used when something caught his eye, and Yuuki paled at the photo on the news. Staring back at him was Akira, hair a little wilder, eyes wide with fear, hands holding up a placard like—

“Kitagawa, that’s a mugshot,” Sakamoto said. “Mishima, pass me the green, yeah?”

Kitagawa hummed. “I was wondering what that was.”

“And it’s the news,” Sakamoto went on. “You think they actually look into that shit?”

 _That’s Akira_ , Yuuki thought, pushing the green paint over without taking his eyes off the screen. _That’s Akira. Akira’s_ real _; this is proof._

Heedless of the paint still on his hands, Yuuki dug his phone out of his pocket and took a picture. The news flashed to a different photo of a bald politician, so he took a picture of that, too.

Takamaki slung an arm over his shoulder. Her breasts pushed into his back; he found he didn’t care about something that would have most of the student body—Sakamoto included—panting like animals in heat. “Oh?” she said, staring at the pictures. “Moving on from bar codes?”

“This is different,” Yuuki said, through gritted teeth. “I—I, uh, need to make a phone call.”

“Oh, sure.” Takamaki let him go. Yuuki ran off so quickly he didn’t see the worried looks the group cast each other.

He found an out-of-the-way bathroom, plugged his earbuds in, and hit the app.

 _“_ _Oh, Yuuki,”_ Akira said. _“Welcome back. You’re awfully early today.”_

Yuuki hadn’t done the peacoat justice; Akira looked like an actual detective wearing it, smart and sophisticated. He couldn’t remember who he’d seen wearing it, but liked it enough to recreate it.

(Worse: Akira was wearing the fake glasses he’d crafted, too.)

For months now, Yuuki had avoided the telepathic connection the app gave him to Akira. The prompts were good enough for him to communicate, and had Akira discovered his brief controlling spell, chances were good Akira wouldn’t have wanted to speak to him anymore. Besides, this way Akira wouldn’t be burdened with Yuuki’s insecurities and problems while trying to work through his own.

But now he tapped one paint-smeared finger against the screen, and Akira closed his eyes and tried to decipher the feelings going his way. Yuuki thought about the news segment over and over again, wishing for it to make it through.

 _“_ _A woman…?”_ Akira mumbled. _“A kidnapping? Oh, that’s me… Oh, that’s…”_

He frowned in concentration. Yuuki took his hand away and found it shaking, the paint slick all over his phone casing. There were no prompts; this was all going to be Akira.

 _“_ _I’m sorry,”_ Akira said. _“I don’t really remember much of what happened before I came here; you already know that. But, if what we learned at Tube Company is real, it could be possible…”_

He trailed off to think. _“I was kidnapped, yes,”_ he decided. _“But not by that politician. I don’t think even he can construct a plan this elaborate, and from what we’ve seen in my memories, this isn’t Earth. Unless he hand-picked me, I don’t think he has anything to do with this.”_

Yuuki reminded him of the mugshot. Akira shook his head again, and gave Yuuki a look filled with pure resolve. _“We’ll get to the bottom of this. Together.”_

 **Together** , Yuuki promised.

 

* * *

 

 

Christmas came and went and Masayoshi Shido was arrested under suspicion of plotting, aiding, or abetting a long-standing kidnapping-and-murder scheme that went back dozens of years, among other things. One woman tearfully admitted to sleeping with the man, being paid off and threatened to keep quiet about it to keep her job, and then winding up a single mother. Her son had gone missing, too, albeit years ago.

(It was a stretch, Yuuki knew. Shido would never be convicted for it because he hadn’t done a thing other than be a creep, but he could hold out hope for a second trial involving everything else the investigation was likely to turn up. He didn’t even doubt that the original news story was right; Shido gave him the same vibe Kamoshida did, and that was all Yuuki needed.)

Yuuki’s parents frowned at the news when the boy’s picture was shown. No older than six or seven, with some of his baby teeth displayed in his huge grin as he held up a handmade Phoenix Ranger Featherman ragdoll. The boy had gone to school one day and never came back.

“I knew it was him,” the woman grit out to the flock of newscasters. “If anyone learned he had a bastard, it would be the end of his career. Why wouldn’t he get rid of my Goro?”

“Some people,” Yuuki’s father said.

Yuuki didn’t stay to hear more; at school the latest news to run circuit wasn’t just Shido and his plots, but the fast-food exec’s, too.

“He sold his daughter for political footing?” someone gossiped loudly during lunch. “Seriously?”

“I heard her husband won’t even let her come to school anymore,” someone else said, in the break between classes. “He doesn’t think she needs an education.”

“What the fuck is wrong with this country,” Takamaki and Sakamoto seethed, along with half the student body.

Yuuki watched the flowerbeds at the school entrance slowly wilt, and tried to find a bit of joy in Akira’s handmade Santa suit, complete with a mustache that just didn’t fit him. This time Morgana’s card had let Akira have a bit of cake and tea, and they’d just enjoyed the quiet together before Yuuki was forced back into the real world and the sinking realization that nothing was going to be okay.

 

* * *

 

 

To his surprise, he visited Nijima over New Year’s.

Her hair had grown out a bit during her time in jail, but she was still as poised as ever, if not moreso; her arms were toned. She looked leaner, more muscular.

“I’m as surprised as you are,” she said as he stared. “Turns out there isn’t much to do in juvenile hall aside from study and work out, and my sensei has taken to visiting to teach us the basics of discipline. It's nice to know he cares.”

“Visiting?” he blurted out. Inwardly, he wondered, _What sensei?_

She frowned. “I’m in juvenile hall, not solitary confinement. Now, what did you want to talk to me about?”

He didn’t really know. Nijima was in jail—juvenile hall, but it was almost the same in society’s eyes—and if anyone found out he’d visited…

But if there were anyone who could assuage the ball of worry coiling in his stomach, it was Nijima. “How could you do it?” he wound up asking. “How could you do something you knew was wrong, that went against everything you lived for, and still come out proud like this?”

“Because I did it for students like you,” Nijima said. “Because I wanted to atone for being useless when it came to Kamoshida’s abuse.” Her mouth twisted; her voice went wry. “And, because like the goody-two-shoes I was, because the principal asked me to.

“Let me guess why you asked: because society is unraveling, and you don’t know what to do about it or what your place in it might be. Am I right?”

Well, she wasn’t wrong. The future plans form still sat blank in a desk drawer at home. With all the scandals popping up like cockroaches, who could blame him if he never found the time to think about his future goals?

“Or were you referring to how people like Kamoshida become people—well, like Kamoshida?”

He couldn’t answer. His breath caught in his throat; his heart stuttered in his chest. January, and Shujin had yet to find a replacement principal and several replacement coaches for their sports teams. No one wanted to be the one looked at like they were going to become the next piece of gum stuck to someone’s shoe.

Detested. Scorned. Every action analyzed and scrutinized and compared, no stone left unturned in what would only become a career-long smear campaign.

When the bullies wanted to hurt you, they either found reasons or made them up. As long as they had someone to rip to pieces they didn’t care if they spread slander and baseless rumors or the truth.

Nijima plowed on: “Everyone has something they want to hide, and something they want to take pride in. What they’re willing to do to protect their secrets or keep their pride from being damaged—well, that’s when people like Kamoshida and Shido decide they’re above the law, that they have to _be_ above the law, because the only place left for them to go once they’ve reached their heights is down, and then they’ll be no better than the rest of us.”

You wait for them to topple off their pedestal, but they never do.

Someone else always drags them down with them.

Nijima smiled at him. “That you’re here, asking this, proves you won’t be like them.”

He wasn’t so sure, anymore.

 

* * *

 

 

Valentine’s Day came around, and Yuuki found a reason to use another of the date cards Morgana gave him over the summer. This one took them to another virtual cafe outfitted with heart decorations and draped in red and pink streamers. Akira had made another outfit just for the occasion: a western-style suit, complete with a blood-red suit vest and tie.

 _“How do I look?”_ he’d said, giving a spin so Yuuki could watch his coattails flap.

If Yuuki didn’t know any better, he would have thought Akira was flirting with him. Him, of all people!

But Akira didn’t know how cowardly he really was. That it was hard to watch Akira’s memories, or to deal with Morgana, or to deal with his own parents. Yuuki was going to be a third-year, a senior, in just a handful of months and he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life.

No, he convinced himself. Akira wasn’t flirting with him; Akira was flirting with the person Akira thought he was. Akira was flirting because he knew nothing would ever come of it; there were no consequences for Akira, only upsides, while Yuuki sat in his room and felt every cold inch of the future settling down on his shoulders.

Yuuki couldn’t fall for Akira. Akira might have been real, but he wasn’t in a place Yuuki could reach. Yuuki would travel across the globe if it meant helping the boy on the other side of the screen, but he couldn’t traverse dimensions. He couldn’t rip holes in the fabric of space-time and bring Akira home.

 **You look great** , Yuuki picked, because despite not wanting to fall for Akira, and despite knowing that they could never actually be together, and despite the fact that Akira knew nothing about him at all—

Yuuki was still in love, falling hard and fast. No, he’d already fallen, ever since last summer when Akira had first showed up on his phone.

Akira was someone just for him. Akira was someone who was always glad to see him. Akira didn’t need to hear the things Yuuki whispered into thin air on the empty train rides home; Akira just needed to smile and greet him and Yuuki would be okay.

Yuuki would be okay.

 

* * *

 

 

Kitagawa didn’t look up from the painting he was working on as he said, “My future plans?”

“Yeah,” Yuuki said. “Takamaki said she’s going to keep modeling, and Suzui said she’d like to teach”—still weird, but it fit her to a tee—“but Sakamoto said he wasn’t sure. Said his mom didn’t want him wasting the opportunity to earn more later on than if he just joined the workforce. He said they had a fight about it.”

“Is that so?”

“I mean, he can’t do a lot of trade jobs because of his leg, and he doesn’t have the patience for computer work. But what can he do, when he’s lost the only thing he looked forward to having?”

“You mean a track career,” Kitagawa said. “But even professional athletes need to consider alternate options in case of retirement or injury, don’t they? Sakamoto would still be pondering, then, even if…”

Even if it hadn’t happened. Even if the first time Kamoshida put his hands on someone the wrong way got him fired for it, and none of anything since had happened.

“Well, that is just something for Sakamoto to decide,” Kitagawa said. “As for me, well.”

For the first time since Yuuki sat down, Kitagawa looked up. He stared at the brushes stacked in cups next to tubes of paint and shuddered, his hands jerking across his painting like a three-year-old with a short attention span, or as if he were having a seizure. The words Kitagawa forced out of his mouth next shook Yuuki to his core.

“I used to love painting, you see,” Kitagawa said, “just for the sheer joy of it. Of creation. Of making something beautiful, even if it was only beautiful to me. And Sen—Madarame encouraged it at first. When I was young, I could paint what I liked, and he would praise it and me and pat my head, saying he was looking forward to my next work. After I got older, however, that began to change. He would critique my brush technique, or my use of one color over another, or say that the work was a bit too abstract—little things that any budding artist might hear, little things I was used to hearing from my own teachers at school. I thought he was doing it to make it fair between all of his students, to prove that just because I was his first didn’t mean I was exempt.”

He poured white all over his sheet. Smeared it into the lines he’d been working on for so long until the whole thing was nothing but a jumbled mess of color that made Yuuki’s stomach churn. He had to wonder what kind of paper Kitagawa was using, and if there was anything of it left. Kitagawa didn’t even seem to notice.

“But it went on for years, and the critiques grew harsher; where my teachers at school would explain their reasoning, he would simply tell me to fix it. He would tell me—all of us—that we had to listen, or we could never make anything of ourselves as artists. Naturally, we listened. Art was all we had and all we had to look forward to. It was the only thing we knew. I could barely cook myself cup ramen by the time I was thirteen, but I could clean my brushes in my sleep. Sometimes I did so; sometimes I fell asleep at my canvas, only to be awakened when the older students returned. They were the only reason I ate breakfast some mornings. My grades began to drop; I was more focused on pleasing Madarame than I was my teachers. I slept through classes. I missed meals. Madarame bought less food and more art supplies, telling us that unless we painted well, we wouldn’t have much to eat.”

Paint bled onto the table. Kitagawa pushed it around, swirling it over the wood, tracing out figures only he could understand.

“Some of the older students got jobs to buy us food; Madarame made them quit, telling them that they weren’t artists unless they could devote themselves to the craft. That, I believe, is what pushed them over the edge; Madarame had promised them not only his tutelage but food and shelter. A place for them to go home to, since the ones they had before no longer wanted them. They began demanding to know what he was doing with the paintings he took, where the pieces were, whether the fact that he couldn’t show them to us meant they were destroyed or sold, where the money was going. They would point at me and say, ‘Sensei, he can’t live like this! Isn’t he your son? Shouldn’t you care?’”

Kitagawa, after months in the therapy center, was looking much healthier. He could eat one large meal a week but refused it more often than that, and ate like a bird the rest. The staff made sure everything he got was as nutritionally balanced as possible and never berated him for playing with his food because he always cleaned his plate.

Yuuki thought about the fridge at home, sparse unless he bought groceries these days. He thought about dinners alone at the table, with no one to keep him company except Akira on the other side of the screen. He thought about the fact that his parents started working later without telling him at all, and didn’t come home five or six nights out of the week.

“Then we found out Madarame was selling our artwork, and for far more money than we thought. The price tags were in the millions; enough to feed us for months at a time, especially if we spent frugally; I remember watching the older students do the math, you see, and there was always enough left over. But we never saw a cent of it. Madarame insisted he had old debts, old bills, old favors to pay off. He said that unless we didn’t care about him—and therefore, about ourselves—we had to keep painting. ‘One day it will pay off,’ he said. ‘One day I won’t have to use it for this or that, and you’ll all have the privilege of starting out in the art world as students of _the_ Madarame.’”

‘One day you’ll go to the Olympics, and you’ll have me to thank.’

“But they all began to leave, one by one. They would go to school one day and not return; they would leave in the middle of the night, leaving only their futons behind. One of them had a fit and drank the used paint water until he got sick; Madarame wouldn’t let us call the hospital, told us he couldn’t afford the bill, and we sat in the other room as he choked on his own vomit. When Madarame called the police, he said the boy committed suicide while the rest of us were sleeping. He threatened us not to say a word. He drove the rest of them away with that. No one wanted to keep studying under a man who did not care if they lived or died.”

Kitagawa’s eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with dark circles when he looked up at Yuuki again. He’d heard the rest of this, partly from the news and partly from Suzui, but it meant something else coming from Kitagawa himself, who continued to trace circles into the table. He likely wasn’t aware of doing it. He voice went quiet, contemplative.

“Madarame was all I had. He was all I ever knew. I couldn’t bring myself to leave him, even when the other students begged me to. I owed him my life, not only as a person, but as an artist as well. I knew I couldn’t be anything—would never have been anything—without Madarame at my side, vouching for my talent. So I stayed, and I kept painting for him. I painted until I could paint in my sleep, until I could paint through hunger pangs and dizzy spells alike. None of it was ever enough; he would critique every work until all I could see were the flaws, he would withhold food if I didn’t meet the week’s quota, he would scorn my use of model, no matter how aesthetically pleasing they were to the eye. Patrons wanted paintings of beautiful women, not imperfect ones or androgynous ones. They did not want men in their paintings, no matter how chiseled their jawline or awe-inspiring their musculature. The obese were especially unwanted, no matter how much I enjoyed sketching them in class. Is it so strange, Mishima, to find something usually so unappealing so fascinating?”

Yuuki—who endured Kamoshida’s leers in the locker room, who knew the former coach didn’t stand a single trace of fat on any of his players—did, and said so. Kitagawa’s face darkened.

“You and many others, I fear. In any case, I painted. If I passed out at the canvas, it meant I wasn’t painting enough. If I passed out at school, it meant it was a distraction—from painting, of course. I forgot what it meant to eat. I could live off a single rice ball, or a bag of bean sprouts the grocery store had thrown away, or nothing but salt water; but it wasn’t enough. My body demanded energy I couldn’t give it. I blacked out in class; whole periods went by, where I would sit at my desk and appear to be listening, but I was not. I’d long been forced to sit out of gym, dozing off in the shade of the school building and dreaming of one more bite of food or of the canvas I’d left unfinished.”

He shrugged. “One day I dozed off and simply did not wake. Madarame was busy with an exhibition of his and wouldn’t answer when the school called him; they had no choice but to call the hospital. A month or two later of trying to get me to eat, of watching me fade in and out of consciousness, of listening to me beg to go home so I could finish my paintings, the doctors sent me here.”

“Did Madarame visit you? In the hospital?”

Kitagawa scowled. “The nurses said he tried to, but due to an informant, had been barred from seeing me. They called him an abusive bastard. A leech. I told them they were wrong, and they gave me pitiable looks but never contradicted a word I said. One of those nurses was a former student of Madarame, or knew one of them, because she stayed with me often and told me I didn’t have to think that way anymore. But Madarame was all I had, all I knew. I couldn’t bear to think of a future where I couldn’t earn his praise anymore.”

He took a deep breath, finally staring down at the mess he made on the table. “Which is why I can’t answer your question, Mishima. The only future I could count on is gone. What else is left for me?”

Yuuki helped him clean up the mess, throw his sheet of paper away—the thing was so soaked through it had torn into a million scraps through Kitagawa’s ministrations—and watched as Kitagawa returned to his room, his helper keeping his distance but keeping an eye on him all the same.

The receptionist stopped Yuuki on his way out. “You come here a lot, don’t you? Have you ever thought of being a student helper?”

“No, I…” It would just be another thing taking away from his time with Akira. Akira needed him. He was already Akira’s helper, in a way, and Yuuki knew that if he dared to do the same with a real, live person, his obsessive, controlling behavior would make itself known much more readily. Yuuki didn’t want to be like Kamoshida or Madarame, but knew that same darkness swirled around inside of him. He could be exactly the same.

He didn’t want to be.

He gave the receptionist a vague response—coming up on his midterms, next year’s his third, got to concentrate on entrance exams and all that—and she gave him a smile that said she knew he was lying and a brightly-colored, glossy pamphlet from behind the counter.

“You never know,” she said, “it might look good on your college applications.”

Yuuki, as soon as he was out of sight of the building, crumpled it up and shoved it in his pocket.

 

* * *

 

 

Just because his parents were never around didn’t mean that college pamphlets didn’t make their way onto the dining table, each one with a different set of majors circled in red pen. What they specialized in, Yuuki guessed, as he gathered them up and tossed them in a shoe box under his bed. Not a single one was for computer science or coding or programming, the only things he was starting to realize he had any interest in, outside of Akira. Volleyball had been fun and a way to exercise and socialize—at least, back in middle school, it had been—but Shujin wasn’t determined to bring the teams back, and Yuuki had no interest in volleyball anymore, not even as a way to exercise.

He penned up a program to record what went on in the app—Akira talking to him, Akira humming as he cooked dinner or crafted items, Akira reading his bedtime stories aloud—and started going running with Akira’s voice in his ears. It was the only way he knew of to wear himself out enough that any question asking how he was doing couldn’t be met with skepticism when he replied, “Just tired, that’s all.”

It was the excuse he used, over and over, to explain to his lack of future plans form to teacher. “I’m just tired, that’s all. This year’s been so rough. I’ll have it done tomorrow—by the end of the week—after break.”

And his teachers, likely as tired as he was, let him.

The truth was that he didn’t have the energy to focus on what was happening tomorrow, much less a week from now, and definitely not a month from now. Years? He could forget years. In ten years he would still be a loser, a zero, despite how hard his parents tried to get him not to be.

But he watched Akira’s memories late at night, and thought: Akira doesn’t deserve a zero. Akira deserves someone as brave and strong as he is—moreso than that, even—so he has someone to lean on. He deserves someone who deserves to be called Yuuki.

When he finally turned his form in, the relief on his teacher’s face made his stomach clench with guilt.

This wasn’t for Yuuki. Other students tended to pick what they liked or what they did best—Yuuki hadn’t touched a programming textbook until after the Kamoshida scandal had cooled off, and he could definitely not say that it was in his own interests or that he was very good at it.

No, this was for Akira and Akira alone.

 

* * *

 

 

Akira wouldn’t talk to him.

Yuuki told himself to wait—he and Akira had just witnessed Akira’s own death, after all, and the image of the airship exploding was burned into his memory, Akira’s screams still echoing in his ears—but it was hard. His second year as a high school student came to a close with death buzzing about in his brain.

He ran to shut it off, playing back old recordings and wishing he’d thought up the program sooner, to capture Akira’s voice before all of… this.

Akira dying. Akira, _dying_. Akira couldn’t be dead, because he was right there on the other side of the screen—even if his house was gradually coming apart, even if the base code was visible through the cracks, even if Akira didn’t notice a damn thing—and Yuuki was going to be the one to bring him back.

Then Akira would thank him, and be grateful, and would never, ever leave.

Akira wouldn’t leave the way Suzui did, all sad smiles and grateful words and “I hope you understand, Mishima,” because she couldn’t stand another year at Shujin.

(She told him she forgave him. Nothing was his fault, she said, it was all Kamoshida’s.

But that was wrong. Suzui didn’t know how hard Yuuki didn’t fight that day. Suzui didn’t know that he could have just left, could have never said a word, could have made her life so much easier with the simplest of actions—but he hadn’t.)

Akira wouldn’t leave the way Takamaki did, with pinched expressions as she tried and failed not to hurt his feelings. “My parents want me with them this year, after everything that’s happened…”

( _That you caused_ , she didn’t say, but Yuuki could hear it. It was in her eyes, the accusation swirling like tears even as she hugged him and thanked him for visiting Suzui so much.

The disparity made him want to puke.)

Akira wouldn’t leave the way Sakamoto did, who slung an arm around his shoulders and offered to go jogging with him sometime—provided he could keep up, of course. “My ma found this great prep school for athletic support—maybe you could try it out, too?”

(Except he didn’t want to try it out. He wanted Sakamoto’s heavy arm off his shoulders, and Sakamoto’s number out of his phone, and the weird, expectant look they were all giving him to be something else—anything else, because anything else would be better than admitting that he didn’t know what to do with them all, or what to do with what he thought they were offering.

He couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t want to ask. Asking would make him a loser—would cement the friendless loser Yuuki Mishima firmly inside their heads—and asking if he deserved them all after what he’d done—

He’d smiled as well as he could and took what they gave him, but—)

He only wanted Akira to talk to him again, and stay with him, and never leave. Kitagawa wasn’t a good enough replacement; he was too weird, too eccentric, too prone to forgetting to eat. Kitagawa didn’t look up when Yuuki walked in the room, new lanyard itchy around his neck, and never sounded happy to see him. Kitagawa barely noticed when Yuuki pulled out an old laptop and punched out code unless Yuuki lost himself in it and Kitagawa needed to pee.

But after a couple of days, Akira was back to normal. _“I can’t be dead_ , _”_ he said, eyes blazing with conviction. _“I can’t be dead, because I’m right here, talking to you, Yuuki. We’ll figure this out together. No matter how bad things get, you’ll stay with me, won’t you?”_

Of course Yuuki agreed.


	3. The Third Year, Part One

Except Akira immediately began acting dodgy. Yuuki tuned into the app just to see him hastily putting something away, and was too eager to talk about some material he found that day or what he had for lunch, and Morgana snickered whenever Yuuki brought it up. The prompts wouldn’t let him question Akira; Akira dodged his attempts at telepathy and threatened to unscrew the base of the monitor from its pivot point if he didn’t stop.

But he was back to the smiling Akira, the Akira who was always happy to see him, the Akira who wanted to talk his ear off about everything and nothing. Even as they watched Akira’s memories devolve into the plot of a mediocre sci-fi anime—time travel, soul gems, and oh yeah, the guy who was a computer server—Akira smiled, and laughed, and wished they could all just get along.

_“_ _If he could just trust us to help him,”_ Akira said, _“we wouldn’t be having all of these problems. I feel kind of sorry for him, don’t you, Yuuki?”_

**Yeah,** Yuuki picked, **but he’s making it difficult.**

_“_ _But he was so happy in the amusement park! Did you see his face when he got that hug from Nyuroki? It was like he’d never felt anything as soft in his whole life! Doesn’t that make you sad?”_

Yeah, it did. Goro—Reon, the computer server—was just like a kid who’d had to grow up too fast—probably a by-product of being kidnapped and missing his mother and then dying in a dimension that wouldn’t accept his soul as part of its reincarnation cycle so it wandered for millennia until some scientists trapped it in a tank.

Mediocre sci-fi anime? Even the bad studios wouldn’t buy a script like this.

**I guess you like Nyuroki, too?**

_“_ _He just looks soft, that’s all,”_ Akira was quick to defend. He tugged at a lock of hair, pink staining his cheeks. _“Morgana won’t let me touch his ears, so…”_

**Cute**.

Yuuki laughed as Akira stammered, flushed harder, then threw a sheet over the monitor.

Yuuki still whispered good night back to him, as he always did before leaving.

 

* * *

 

His third year started. Yuuki thought he would feel different, more confident, now that he was a senior; instead half his teachers still side-stepped the issue of him not being in a club, and the other half started recommending cram schools for him to attend. His new homeroom teacher was pushy in a way that Yuuki could only read as desperate to restore Shujin’s reputation; Yuuki knew it wasn’t possible. Kamoshida and Kobayakawa would be the stain that never came out, no matter how hard the staff tried.

Yuuki wound up going through the motions of pretending he cared—yes, he would look into this school or that school; yes, he would look into clubs; yes, he would look into another sport—all the while wishing he could rush home and continue working on his programs. Any second he wasted not coding was a second lost to his future with Akira, a second they wouldn’t get back, and a second longer it would take to get there.

Akira would help him. Akira would make him feel better; Akira would be grateful and—

Yuuki bit his lip hard enough to see stars, and Kitagawa continued doodling.

“Oh, that’s right,” Kitagawa said, apropos of nothing, “I’m being transferred tomorrow.”

“What?”

“I’m being transferred tomorrow,” Kitagawa repeated. “One of Madarame’s old pupils has agreed to take me in, although he said his apartment needed to be cleaned beforehand. He lives across the city, however, so I will be transferred to a facility closer to his dwelling before moving in with him.” His hand stopped. He frowned at it. “Is this not how it’s done? I was told it was proper etiquette to inform one’s friends and family before moving elsewhere.”

“Well—well, yeah,” Yuuki said, after struggling to pick his jaw up off the floor. “But—tomorrow? Why wait so long to tell me?”

_Wait,_ his brain told him. _Friends? He thinks we’re friends?_

“It merely slipped my mind.” Kitagawa looked back down at his sheet and wiped his hand off on his shirt. The pencil he reached for was nothing more than a stub, the eraser long ground down into dust, and his hands shook as he held it. “You asked me what my future plans were, and I told you I had never considered anything other than being an artist. Madarame robbed me of that, but I’ve decided: I won’t let him stop me. Even if I only draw for myself, even if I only paint for my friends, even if I’m forced into some mediocre paper-pushing job for a firm that treats me like dirt, I won’t stop. Nothing and no one will be worse than Madarame, and I’ve survived him. I’ll survive for years to come.”

“You say that now, after all this time?” Yuuki didn’t understand. Kitagawa was an art freak, that much was obvious, but while Yuuki still couldn’t look at a volleyball net without breaking into a cold sweat, Kitagawa was fingerpainting every day. Like clockwork, from four to five, even if some interesting tidbit on the TV caught his attention. Even if his hands shook as he unstopped the paint.

How could Kitagawa say he would keep painting, when it was obvious how much it hurt him to? How could he say he would keep painting, when he was getting ready to be thrust into the real world, where men and women worse than Madarame lied and stole and cheated and got praised for it?

How could he say that now, after Yuuki was convinced Kitagawa would be a nobody just like Yuuki for the rest of his life?

“He was everything to me,” Kitagawa said, hand a blur of motion, “which is exactly what he wanted. I almost died for him, to give him what he wanted, and he still had the nerve to call me ungrateful when he was arrested. Perhaps that was when I decided he wouldn’t rule my life anymore; that he _couldn’t_ rule my life anymore, not if I wanted it to be my own. Art was what connected us, and I’m loathe to say I hated it for that, but I had nothing else and no interest in anything else. I can say this because without art I would be nothing. I know that now. I only need to rediscover what it means to create for myself, before I rediscover what it means to create for others.”

With that, he stood up. Yuuki, still frozen in his seat in disbelief, stared as he slid the sheet across the table. Akira’s face stared back at him, as close to photo-realistic that Kitagawa could get in five minutes with a stubby pencil. He was wearing the outfit he’d made recently—Yuuki would recognize the odd fray in the shirt’s collar anywhere—with those fake glasses propped up on his forehead, pushing his curls back.

“One day, I hope you will do the same, Mishima.”

Yuuki turned in his helper badge that night, citing a need to buckle down on his studying, Kitagawa’s drawing tucked inside of his laptop.

The receptionist looked sad for just a second, before saying she understood.

 

* * *

 

 

**Tell me a story.**

_“Oh, sure! Which one would you like to hear?”_

 

* * *

 

 

**That looks good on you.**

_“Really? Thanks!”_

 

* * *

 

 

Kitagawa left no address with the rehab clinic. Yuuki didn’t care; Akira was attempting to unravel the mystery behind exploding Cielnotrons, of all things, and Yuuki had to support him.

If that meant staying at home all summer and rushing through his homework to spend just one more minute with Akira, he didn’t care. If it meant ignoring Sakamoto’s messages and phone calls to hang out, he didn’t care. If it meant running to the local convenience store in the middle of the night for more sharls, he didn’t care. If it meant letting his college applications gather dust—if it meant making his counselor wait another week—if it meant sweating in his room as Akira splashed around in some virtual pool and feeling, for once, happy—

He didn’t care.

(If it meant he got to see Akira fused with that weird crow-spirit Akira had named Arsene following him around, well. He wished his screen-capture program worked while the memories were playing. He would have to work on that.)

 

* * *

 

 

August came around. His parents, as they always did, were off working. The rare occasions they’d had to eat together during his freshman year had dwindled down to nothing, likely with no objection on their part, but today Yuuki was interrupted from his instant noodles by a knock on the door.

No one ever came to visit. If the landlady had a question or a notice, she put it in the mailbox, and he and his parents didn’t have friends who visited.

Leaving Akira on the table—gushing about his latest curry spice combination and making Yuuki’s mouth water—he answered it. Sakamoto was on the other side, scowling.

“Lemme in,” he said, and Yuuki did.

Sakamoto toed his shoes off in a messy pile; Yuuki’s weren’t any better, and besides, he’d left Akira waiting. Yuuki warned him he had to leave—Akira looked despondent for only a fraction of a second—and just as Akira was waving goodbye—

“What’s that? Some kinda game or somethin’?”

Sakamoto, staring over his shoulder at Akira, who blithely continued eating his curry despite an entire wall of his house being nothing but glowing code. Giving Akira the stink eye, like this was some kind of waifu game and Yuuki had made all the wrong choices and not a portal to another world, another dimension.

Yuuki exited the app, shoved his phone in his pocket, and said, “You want some tea, Sakamoto?”

“Hell no.” He took a seat, stretching his legs out under the table. “Gimme a soda. You got soda, right?”

“Maybe.” For sure; he’d taken to buying at least one thing he picked up hunting for sharls, and there were dozens of bottles and cans in the fridge. His room, which used to be as bare as a monk’s, was now the epicenter of a tourists’ shopping spree through Shibuya. He gave Sakamoto a drink from the very back. Mango-something-or-other. It sounded gross.

Sakamoto let him finish his noodles in peace, wishing he could hear Akira tell him how tasty the food he’d made today was and how he wished Yuuki could have some. Sakamoto sipped at his drink, when back in the rehab center he’d guzzle down bottles in seconds, grimacing at the taste or the expiration date on the bottom of the cap.

“Look, Mishima,” Sakamoto finally said, “we’re worried about you, man.”

“Why?”

“Uh, ‘cause you’ve been ignoring all of us for the past three months? I tried to invite ya to the festival last week, but you ignored me. You haven’t been talkin’ to Yusuke, neither, even though he hoped you would. Shiho said she sends you letters, but she hasn’t gotten a reply. What the hell?”

Yusuke. Shiho. When was Sakamoto so buddy-buddy with them? “Kitagawa never said anything like that.”

“He gave you a note before he transferred, right?”

“He gave me a picture, not a note.” One that Yuuki had hanging on his wall in a frame, like it was the Mona Lisa or something. It was right across from his bed, so Akira’s face was the first thing he saw in the morning.

(And Suzui always said he never had to write her back. It’d be nice if he did, but he didn’t have to, she always finished—and Yuuki, with nothing to say back, never got around to admitting how impressively boring his life had become. It felt weird, matching her pages with a single paragraph.)

“The note was on the back,” Sakamoto sighed. “Did you really not look at it?”

“I’ll look at it later.”

“Ya don’t gotta look at it,” Sakamoto grumbled, and pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. He spread it out with his hand, paper crinkling as he did so, until Yuuki was looking at—

Akira. In the outfit he’d made four months ago: long sleeved t-shirt and jeans and sneakers, complaining about how hard the materials were to find and even harder to craft into something he could wear. _“I don’t think I’ll ever think of shoemakers the same way again,”_ he’d laughed.

“Knew it,” Sakamoto said at the expression on Yuuki’s face.

“What—”

“Went to his hometown over Golden Week and snagged one, y’know,” Sakamoto said. “Him and that other kid—Akechi something—they got freaking shrines up there. People praying for them to come home. So if you know something, Mishima—”

Mishima. Not Yuuki; so he wasn’t worth the same treatment as Suzui and Kitagawa. Maybe he hadn’t been acting like he deserved it, but it still stung.

“—ya gotta tell me. Tell somebody! They got family lookin’ for ‘em! Wouldn’t your folks wanna know if you were safe or not, if the same thing happened to you?”

“Look at you, Mr. Therapist,” Yuuki said. It came out darker and weaker than he wanted it to; he wanted to sound flippant, like he didn’t care and it didn’t matter. “Now you care what my parents think?”

Sakamoto fixed him with a look that dared him to lie. “Don’t you? You’ve been acting weird ever since Kamoshida went to jail. You think they don’t notice that kinda stuff?”

Yuuki couldn’t look him in the eye; he settled for somewhere by his nose. “Mom thought Kamoshida’s bruises were from me doing drugs. I don’t think they notice anything.”

No matter what, he couldn’t let this escalate. Sakamoto was putting on muscle again, and Yuuki had been letting his go to waste, except for his legs, but Sakamoto had years on him there, too. Sakamoto could win a fist fight easily and wouldn’t even break a sweat doing it.

“Besides, they aren’t even here,” he continued with a shrug. “They won’t even notice when I go to college.”

Sakamoto banged his fist on the table; aside from the way he’d stormed inside, it was the loudest sound Yuuki’d heard all evening. “Mishima,” he growled.

“Sakamoto,” he countered, ignoring the stuttering of his heart.

“Gimme your phone.”

His hand flew to his pocket. “No.”

“I forgot mine,” Sakamoto lied. “Lemme see it.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s my phone! Not yours!”

“Not even to call my ma?”

“I’ll call your mom! You can talk to her on speakerphone!”

“If you weren’t hiding something, you’d let me, wouldn’t ya?” Sakamoto yelled. “Instead of pulling this bullshit with me, just let me see it!”

Sakamoto darted around the table; Yuuki, in an attempt to both back up and stand up at the same time, managed to trip over his chair’s legs. Sakamoto fell upon him like a wolf on a lone, defenseless sheep, and Yuuki managed to squirm onto his back to protect his face through reflex before Sakamoto was pinning him to the floor.

Yuuki braced himself for a hit, completely forgetting his phone, halfway out of his pocket; Sakamoto snagged it, pinned his wrists above his head, and started working it with one hand.

“What’s your lock code?”

“I didn’t say you could use it!”

“Okay, I’ll just guess, then,” he said, and began swiping at random.

Yuuki, who’d thought he’d never be in a situation like this and had set his security so that three wrong attempts in a row would lock his phone down, panicked. He needed to tell Akira ‘good night’ tonight; needed to hear Akira say it back, needed to hear him breathe just to get to sleep. Yuuki squirmed in Sakamoto’s grip, kicked his legs like a toddler throwing a tantrum, and tried throwing his hips around like in that one self-defense class at the rehab center; nothing worked. Sakamoto took his time picking each number, readjusting his weight whenever Yuuki got close to breaking out.

“Fuck you,” Yuuki spat.

“Uh-huh, sure,” Sakamoto said. He probably hadn’t even heard him; Yuuki could call him every name in the book and not a single word would make it through his skull.

He tried anyway. “Fucking meathead, throwing your weight around like Kamoshida. Do you get off on this, too, like he did? Is this what you came here for? Fucking pervert. Fucking pedo-in-the-making. And I bet you like leaving bruises, too. I bet you like leaving reminders—”

“Mishima, shut up,” Sakamoto said. His voice was as flat as a balloon left out for days; he waved Yuuki’s phone in his face, a warning prompt telling him he had one attempt left. “You want out, tell me your lock code.”

There was only one way to get Sakamoto to drop the phone now. Yuuki smiled up at him—Sakamoto grinned back, shaky around the edges, likely thinking Yuuki was giving in—and ground his hips up as much as he could, reveling in the way it made Sakamoto’s eyes go wide, made his breath catch in his throat. “Anything you want, Coach,” Yuuki crooned.

“The code,” Sakamoto ground out. His hand clenched around Yuuki’s wrists and the case of his phone. Yuuki swore he heard it creak.

“I thought you didn’t like using safe words, Coach.”

“The code. I’m serious, Mishima. Tell me the goddamn code!”

“Or what?”

Yuuki knew what: or he’d guess wrong again, and have it shut down. A minor inconvenience, and one Yuuki didn’t want to go through, but he would if he needed to. Sakamoto didn’t have any leverage in the negotiation, aside from having Yuuki on the floor.

Strange how being helpless—completely at Sakamoto’s mercy—gave him so much clarity. He didn’t have to give Sakamoto the lock code. He didn’t. Sakamoto had nothing—Yuuki was surprised he hadn’t just taken off with it, but supposed that their tentative status as maybe-friends made Sakamoto think Yuuki would just give him whatever he wanted.

Sakamoto’s phone went off. Yuuki narrowed his eyes into a glare; Sakamoto scowled down at him before placing Yuuki’s phone on the seat of the chair he’d tripped over and pulled out his own. “Hey, ‘taba,” he said. “Yeah, I got it, but he ain’t givin’ me the code for it.”

Yuuki let himself go limp, eyeing his phone. He had to say goodnight to Akira. It was only fair, after their dinner together was cut short.

“You sure? I thought—”

But Sakamoto’s grip was like a vise, just like Kamoshida’s, except Kamoshida had never actually pinned him to the floor. To a wall, sure, or to a desk while telling him to take every punch like a man, that every hit would make him stronger, that every bruise would pay off in the end when Shujin won the nationals again.

Sakamoto was frowning at him. Sakamoto was probably thinking he was a freak, was probably wondering what kind of stuff Kamoshida really did to his teams, what all the bandages and slings and braces really meant. The track team had gotten abused, but the track team had Sakamoto’s temper to thank for not having to deal with it for too long.

“Yeah, okay,” Sakamoto said, and hung up. Yuuki glared up at him; Sakamoto sighed, shoving his phone back in his pocket. “Was hopin’ you’d just admit to somethin’. Tell me you were actin’ so weird because some shitty adult was tellin’ ya to keep quiet. If it’s like that, fine. If it’s not like that, then sorry, I guess. But you ain’t gettin’ this back,” he waved Yuuki’s phone again, screen dark, “‘till we’re done with it.”

“That’s stealing.”

“If you got info on those guys, the police’ll understand where we’re coming from. Prez knows that much; turns out she only went to juvie as a statement not to run around, doing shit like this.” He shrugged. “Who knew?”

“You can’t just take it!”

“Then work with me! Freakin’ hell, Mishima!”

Of course. He was never Yuuki to anyone outside of his family—except Akira. Akira hadn’t known Yuuki would help him recover his lost memories in the beginning; Akira was just glad for his company, glad to talk to empty air and give out pieces of comfort when Yuuki admitted to having a bad day.

Akira. What would Akira think, if Yuuki disappeared for days? For weeks? Would he think Yuuki had abandoned him? Would he be able to keep going like that?

Akira had bounced back from the depression caused by the knowledge of his death. Akira could bounce back from this, too, but he wouldn’t be able to recover anymore memories without Yuuki. He’d be stuck wondering over Arsene’s sudden disappearance and Goro’s decision to return to the Cielnotron server until Yuuki returned.

Akira needed him. Sakamoto only needed what he thought Yuuki had.

“I don’t know anything about those guys,” Yuuki said, “and I don’t get why you think I do. Oh, and I can’t feel my hands.”

“If you didn’t know anything, you wouldn’t be acting all weird every time you see Amamiya’s face,” Sakamoto argued. “If you didn’t know anything, ya wouldn’t have made a copy of him in that game. If you didn’t know anything, ya wouldn’t have freaked when ya saw him on the news last year.”

“I don’t know any Amamiya.”

“The guy on the poster, on the news, Mishima,” Sakamoto said, “that’s Amamiya. And you know him.”

“I don’t.”

“Ya do.”

Oh.

_Oh_.

So Sakamoto wasn’t going to believe him. Just like with Yuuki’s mother, he could talk and talk and get absolutely nowhere except further down a hole everyone else was digging for him and insisting that he was doing all the work. That all he had to do was tell the truth, when what he was saying _was_ the truth, and they just didn’t want to hear it.

And he was tired of it.

“Just take it and go,” Yuuki said.

This wasn’t what Sakamoto was expecting; he jumped in shock, grip loosening. “For real?”

“Just—” he took a deep breath, trying to keep his voice even. Anything to get Sakamoto to leave faster. “Just go. Take it and go.”

After all, what Yuuki wanted wasn’t important. What Yuuki had to say was never the truth. He didn’t know why anyone bothered to ask, when they just answered the question themselves seconds later without hearing his side of things, when they insisted they were right and he was wrong. When they insisted they knew best; when they insisted they knew what he was going through.

Sakamoto and his friends were just more shitty adults in the making. They just didn’t know it yet. They never might, content to think that what they were doing was right and ignoring the victims left in their wake.

Yuuki watched Sakamoto slink out of the apartment. He picked himself up off the floor, cleaned up the mess the brief scuffle had caused, and tossed the missing person poster in the trash.

He didn’t know any Amamiya. The resemblance to Akira was uncanny, sure, but there was no spark in Amamiya’s eyes, despite being a damn photo. Amamiya looked just as scared and dead inside as Yuuki felt.

No, he didn’t know any Amamiya, and he didn’t want to.

 

* * *

 

 

He didn’t hear from Sakamoto the next day, not that he’d expected to; the thief went to different school on the other side of Tokyo, and Yuuki only had enough spare change on him to cover his food expenses for a month, if need be, and while he wasn’t keen on the idea of leaving Akira with Sakamoto of all people, he had to hope Akira would understand.

Akira was smart—or rather, Akira had enough time to himself to think himself into corners and back out again, most of the time before Yuuki even knew he had a problem—but Akira was also depending on Yuuki’s help. He had no one over there except a cat-boy who talked in riddles and was, Yuuki had realized, pushing them together. He hadn’t needed Morgana’s incentives to talk to Akira in the first place—but he’d needed them to start unlocking memories. Watching them had been like standing under Kamoshida’s scrutinizing eye all over again; clearly when he’d stopped Morgana had noticed and stepped in, or maybe…

Yuuki stopped in the middle of the kitchen, plastic wrap stuck to his hand, the lid of the instant noodles punctured in his haste to get it open.

He was still on summer vacation. His last summer vacation ever.

And he’d spent it glued to his phone and textbooks.

There was nothing wrong with that, right? Nothing wrong with making sure his summer homework was done, nothing wrong with filling out a few extra pages in his workbooks every day, nothing wrong with looking over his code for the umpteenth time. It wasn’t as if he had anyone to spend it with, anyway—everyone was gone, and it had felt strangely nice not to have to deal with walking out in the summer heat.

(Sakamoto sweating at his door, squinting into the gloom of his apartment after the blinding brightness of the sun. Sakamoto sipping at his soda—Yuuki should have offered him water. Should have known better. Sakamoto should have just asked.

Sakamoto had probably had a better summer than Yuuki did.)

Yuuki, instead of braving the crowds at the festivals or the beach, had stayed inside—like a loser, a voice in the back of his mind jeered, sounding like his middle-school bullies.

There was nothing wrong with that. He’d never liked crowds: too many people jostling for good spots or hovering in packs by one booth or door or another, too many elbows and knees cluelessly thrown around to knock food out of his hands, too many feet stepping on his. So much noise he remembered feeling tempted to yell at them all to shut up. Kids swatting at his legs as he walked by.

There was nothing wrong with that. He’d spent his summer vacation with Akira, and Akira had enjoyed all the extra time together. They’d caught up on the backlog of memories and Akira had gone to one of Morgana’s new date spots—a pool—and splashed around in his clothes until he was shivering with cold. Yuuki had had to make him leave when his lips started turning purple; apparently the baths he’d been taking and the food he’d been eating were always lukewarm, no matter how steamy the air or how sizzling the pan, and for once he’d felt something other than a tepid warmth that made him question if he was actually, truly, alive.

So… there was nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with being so busy with Akira that Yuuki had missed all of Sakamoto’s calls. Nothing wrong with watching the fireworks through a crack between buildings from his window. Nothing wrong with helping Akira much, much more than he’d helped Kitagawa.

So, why did it feel like he missed out?

Akira always understood when Yuuki left for school—what would a few hours here or there have done, aside from give him some time to work on his mysterious project? What hurt would he have caused to brave the crowds in the summer heat—to whine about it with Sakamoto when sweat made their arms itch—or to visit Kitagawa in his new neighborhood?

He could have saved up and gone to see Suzui. She would have liked that.

He could have found out when Sakamoto and Nijima had started talking.

Instead, he’d talked with Akira. He’d watched Akira cook, and sew, and bang together together a model spaceship made out of vacuum tube wires. Yuuki hadn’t even cared his summer vacation was passing by in the blink of an eye; he was with the only person who mattered—

Or, had Yuuki made him the one person who mattered?

He threw the shrink wrap away, filled his cup up with water from the kettle, and set it down to soak, reaching for his phone—

Not in his pocket.

Right.

He could endure a meal or two—or three, or fifteen, or whatever—without Akira by his side. He’d done it before. He still did when his parents were home and enforcing their ‘no phones at the table’ rule; this was just that, except longer and probably more indefinite.

So he watched the clock on the microwave in lieu of a timer, rolling his chopsticks across the tabletop.

Three minutes.

No phone.

What in the world would he do, now that he didn’t have his phone? He couldn’t go anywhere without his trainpass app, and there was no way he was asking for an advance on his allowance without a good reason. Worse, his parents would ask questions. His mother might shriek at him again and tear his room apart looking for nonexistent contraband.

Well, he could clean it up. That would be something.

But he’d gotten so used to Akira’s voice in his ears as he did just about everything. There was music on Yuuki’s laptop, but it wouldn’t be the same—Akira’s voice wasn’t as intrusive as the screeching of guitars or the banging of drums or the crash of a piano played with too much force. That, too, wasn’t wrong: there were plenty of people who claimed their favorite idol was the only reason they could get through a rough day at a mundane job. It wasn’t strange for him to want to listen to one thing—one person—in particular, was it?

Two minutes.

No, he didn’t think so. Suzui had mentioned that she liked talking to Takamaki because it made her day a bit brighter—this was just that, except with an app.

And he didn’t have that app anymore.

Yuuki wished he’d thought to make backups on his laptop. Stupid not to.

In fact, now that he thought about it—stupid of him to think a lot of things, really. Akira would be just as happy with someone else as he was with Yuuki. In fact, he’d probably be a bit more real—all that cutesy stuff he was pulling recently had to be an act. Twirling in his new outfits, showing off his most recent recipe, pouting when a tool slipped from his hand—those weren’t things any guy Yuuki knew would do. He had to be doing it for attention, or because he could finally emulate a bubble-headed idol without any real consequences, or—or—

One minute.

Or, well, anything. Maybe Akira was just playing around—but Yuuki found he didn’t mind that. He looked forward to every bit of it, because Akira was just happy to show him whatever he’d been working on, even if he’d burned it or the stitches were sloppy or the metalwork was crooked. Akira would proudly show off instant noodles and a ratty T-shirt.

Maybe that’s what Yuuki liked so much about him. He oozed confidence. Every fault was an experience he could learn from, while Yuuki was too afraid to even let his sneaker’s laces flop about on top of his shoes out of fear he would trip over them. There was no way that, were he in Akira’s shoes, he would be okay.

Akira was everything he wasn’t, and for some reason it felt like a hole had been punched straight through his body at the realization that he should have fought tooth and nail to keep Sakamoto from taking his phone.

Should have, but didn’t.

God, he was useless.

Yuuki tore into his noodles.

 

* * *

 

 

Sakamoto didn’t return his phone until a week later. He invited himself into Yuuki’s apartment again, toeing off his shoes and looking sheepish. Kitagawa was with him, a plastic bag of snacks from the convenience store down the street in hand. He took one whiff of the apartment and exclaimed, “My word!”

Yuuki knew better than to laze about; if he did that Akira would be disappointed in him, and the work kept his parents from asking too many questions. They didn’t care what he was doing anymore, as long as it wasn’t drugs or sex or boozing it up with the mafia, but just that morning there’d been an extra five thousand yen in his weekly allowance.

His father approved, which meant his mother approved, which meant they cared more for coming home to a clean house and fresh laundry than how he was doing in school. He’d never gotten more spending money for good grades or a good spot on the team, but this was what earned it: housework, like Yuuki was a maid.

He supposed he’d gone overboard with the cleaning—he’d scrubbed at the baseboards with a washcloth until the paint started to peel and he’d had to touch it up—but it wasn’t his fault his parents bought so many conflicting scents. Lemon and citrus warred with pine and bleach; he kept the balcony door cracked to air out the worst of it.

Kitagawa presented him with the bag, mouth pursed against the smells assaulting him. Yuuki didn’t see the problem; hadn’t Kitagawa grown up around the smell of paint and paint thinner and other dangerous chemicals? How was this any worse?

Even Sakamoto was wrinkling his nose, which was just bad taste after pinning Yuuki to the floor. “You been busy,” Sakamoto said, taking a seat at the table.

“Hard not to be, when you steal my things,” Yuuki said, dumping the bag out and heading to the fridge. He gathered up more soda than was necessary—Kitagawa’s occasional binge-eating coming to mind—and a couple of ceramic cups, because Kitagawa didn’t like the feel of plastic or aluminum.

Weirdo.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Sakamoto said. “And I brought it back, didn’t I?”

True enough, when Yuuki set the drinks down his phone was on the table, next to the can of potato sticks Kitagawa was eyeing. Yuuki pushed it his way and snatched up his phone. “You better not have messed with it.”

“‘taba just looked at it a bit. Like I said, we just wanted to know if you knew anything about Amamiya or Akechi. She looked all over it, said she couldn’t find anything.”

“Of course she couldn’t,” Yuuki said, “because I don’t know any Amamiya. Which I keep telling you, but you don’t listen.”

“But you do,” Kitagawa said. When Yuuki clicked his tongue in annoyance—for some reason, there was a picture of a blue-eyed cat in his gallery—he continued, “Amamiya is in that app, isn’t he?”

“That’s—” Akira. “—Ion-something. Don’t tell me you looked at that, too?”

Sakamoto leaned closer. “It was the only app ‘taba couldn’t crack. She’s some kinda computer whiz, but she couldn’t break into it at all. Said she’d never heard of it before, either. We tried looking it up and just found it mentioned on some forums. People were asking if it was a virus or something.”

Like Yuuki had first thought when he’d discovered it. Two years, now, with Akira. He wondered if they should do something to celebrate. Akira always enjoyed the card trips, but to where?

Kitagawa picked up the ball. “There was much speculation on whether or not it was. But the ones who didn’t delete it reported meeting a boy who had no memory. They said the whole affair felt very strange. No one Futaba looked into continued using the app for very long.”

No one wanted to help Akira? Fine. Yuuki could do it on his own. He’d have a week’s worth of catching up to do, not to mention apologizing for being away for so long so suddenly.

“Though she did find all of your programs. She said they were very clever, in a rather roundabout way.”

Yuuki shrugged. His programs weren’t anything special. The app connecting him to Akira didn’t have any screenshotting or recording functions, so he’d just connected the ones his phone had to the app. It hadn’t been easy—he’d hit Akira dozens of times trying to open the swipe-menu he’d installed—but it hadn’t been as difficult as writing a program from scratch.

Akira. He should check on him. No doubt he was worried; no doubt Morgana was ready to berate Yuuki for abandoning his duty.

It was Kitagawa’s turn to lean forward, though the serious look in his eyes was spoiled by the snacks he kept munching on. “Mishima, if that boy isn’t Amamiya, then who is he?”

“I told you,” Yuuki said, exasperated. “His name’s Ion-something. Ion Pleasel. He’s not Amamiya.”

“But he ain’t an AI or nothing like that, either,” Sakamoto said. “‘taba said his specs must be crazy good to react like a human does—shit.”

“You talked to him,” Yuuki guessed.

“We needed to know what the app did,” Kitagawa said.

“‘taba wanted to know what about it was so unhackable. Her words,” Sakamoto said. “She, uh, took video. As, you know, insurance or somethin’.”

There were several new videos sitting in his gallery, past dozens of photos of bar codes. Whoever Futaba was, she’d at least added to his collection; he picked a video he didn’t remember taking.

_“_ _I don’t want to talk to you,”_ Akira said, sharp as a knife. None of the usual prompts came up; maybe the monitor could tell Yuuki hadn’t been on the other side of the screen, and wouldn’t let some intruder take over all of his hard work. Akira was cooking; he attempted to flip the vegetables in the pan in the air, but half of them scattered across the stove. He growled at the mess.

The metal hand moved into view; Akira swatted it away, irritation in every pore. Without another word, he turned back to his dinner.

Another.

Akira, seated at his desk, working on a large piece of cloth. He moved to hide it when the monitor turned, only to scowl at the screen and return to his work.

Another.

_“_ _—and they won’t go away, Morgana,”_ Akira was saying. He sounded on the edge of hysterics, burying his face into Morgana’s shirt. The cat-eared boy patted him on the back as his shoulders shook. _“I don’t get it. Does this mean something happened? Is Yuuki not coming back?”_

_“_ _He’ll come back,”_ Morgana assured. _“He’s your Yuuki, after all.”_

_“_ _You’re sure?”_

_“_ _Yeah, I’m sure.”_

_“_ _When he comes back, I’ll—”_

_“_ _Not now,”_ Morgana warned. Akira’s back stiffened. He turned to the monitor, eyes red-rimmed and puffy. Snot dripped from his nose; there was a sizable wet spot on Morgana’s shirt.

They both glared at the screen until the video ended.

“He’s very devoted,” Kitagawa commented.

“Look at the first one,” Sakamoto said.

So he did; Futaba must have missed the first bit, because the video started as Akira said, _“—when you didn’t check in last night. Guess you didn’t need to hear good night, huh?”_

His eyes sparkled with mirth. Just a joke; Yuuki missed their bedtime routines sometimes, when homework kept him up late or he wound up crashing before eight. Akira never took any instance personally, jabbed at him the morning or afternoon after, and then let it go. Yuuki would always be back, and Akira knew that.

Except there weren’t any of the usual prompts. Yuuki would always apologize for missing it, but as Akira was kept waiting the furrow in his brow grew deeper.

When the hand swiped at him, he jolted back. _“What? I thought—”_

He didn’t get to finish his sentence; the hand came back, swiping across the screen over and over again. Akira dived under his desk and out of sight. _“I didn’t touch it,”_ he said to himself. _“I didn’t touch it after you left, so why is this—”_

A thump as the hand hit the desk. _“Did I do something?”_ Akira asked. _“Are you mad? Is that it? Please, talk to me!”_

“We tried when he said that,” Sakamoto said, as the hand in the video stopped flailing. “We all took turns. He couldn’t hear any of us.”

“It was very strange,” Kitagawa agreed with a nod, just as Akira poked his head out from under the table, just as cautious as that first day. He had his hands raised, arms poised to defend himself from any more swipes.

_“_ _Yuuki?”_ Akira tried, and Yuuki’s chest ached at the hope and despair in his voice. _“Please, talk to me. I know this is hard. I know I’m not giving you much in return—but I’m grateful, really. I—I think we’re almost at the end. I think we’re almost done. Everything—everything will get better. You’ll see. And I’ll get those people to send me home—maybe you live nearby. We can talk in person! Doesn’t that sound great? You can tell me all about yourself. I can finally make you my famous curry. I can introduce you to my parents—I must have parents, right? And they must care, to put out that poster… But! But after we do that, we can go to the beach! A_ real _beach! And an aquarium, and a cafe, and_ _go_ _stargazing, and…”_

A sob, quiet and quickly stifled. Akira was looking with such expectations at the monitor, at the person on the other side of the screen, the person Yuuki knew wasn’t himself, a fact that Akira must have been realizing.

_“_ _Yuuki, please.”_ His hands fisted in his shirt, as if to tear it to pieces. _“Please, please, talk to me. Even if you want to stop. Even if you got tired of me. I—I can accept that, if you did, so please just tell me. Talk to me. Yuuki.”_

“We were wonderin’ how he knew your name,” Sakamoto said as tears streamed down Akira’s face.

“He made it up,” Yuuki said, mindful of how thick his voice came out. “Said I was brave just to keep going back to him. According to you, I was the only one who stuck around.”

_“_ _Please,”_ Akira sobbed. Yuuki touched the screen out of habit—when the prompts weren’t enough, it was the only other option—and ran his finger down the tracks of tears. _“Did something happen to you?_ _Or—a_ _re you not Yuuki? Did something happen to—happen to Yuuki? Did you do something to Yuuki? Did you?!”_

The video ended. Yuuki started by how abrupt it was; Kitagawa jumped to explain, “We didn’t know how to communicate with him. According to the other videos, it was rather simple, but we didn’t have the same means as you did. It was as if we were being rejected.”

Sakamoto snorted. “Yeah, of course we were. He kept sobbing that somethin’ must’ve happened to you, and got all angry at us. But he’s back with you now.”

“You left him like that,” Yuuki said, transfixed on Akira’s crying face.

“We didn’t have a choice,” Kitagawa said.

“We couldn’t tell him we didn’t mean no harm,” Sakamoto said. “Why don’t you—why don’t you tell him you’re back? So we know we didn’t break it?”

“God help you if you did,” Yuuki told him, and took satisfaction from the way Sakamoto winced.

Good. He had every right to be sorry.

Without a second thought, Yuuki selected the app. The loading screen popped up, and he bent over it, eager and nauseous with nerves, ignoring the way that Sakamoto and Kitagawa leaned in close to watch.

Akira’s house. Yuuki tested the monitor’s movement; so far so good. Akira wasn’t around, but there was a distinctive tinkering noise Yuuki knew by heart.

Akira was crafting something. Sniffling as he did it, in fact, and the prompts popped up.

**Cutting some onions?**

A noise of surprise. Akira scrambled over his desk, dropping whatever he’d been tinkering on to the floor and tripping over the lip in his haste. The crash looked like it hurt, but Akira sprang up not even a second later, saying, _“Yuuki? Is that you?”_

If he looked awful in the videos, he looked worse now. His whole face was swollen. There were dark circles under his eyes the size of dinner plates. It looked like he hadn’t brushed his teeth or washed his hair in days.

“Shit,” Sakamoto breathed.

“Quiet,” Kitagawa reprimanded.

**I’m back.**

Akira’s smile could light up half of Japan. He hiccuped out Yuuki’s name, over and over, wiping more tears from his eyes.

There was no way he could read the monitor like that, so Yuuki pressed a finger to his temple, running the metal hand down Akira’s hair, hoping everything he couldn’t say with prompts got through. Akira leaned into it, pressed his hands to his face, and cried even harder.

_“_ _I must look so pathetic right now,”_ he said, through one shuddering sob after another. _“I didn’t even get this bad when we found out I died, did I?”_

“He _died_?” Sakamoto yelled.

“Quiet!” Kitagawa hissed.

_“_ _But now I—I was so sad, thinking you’d left, thinking something happened to you, and I couldn’t bear it, Yuuki. It was so much worse than anything those people did to me. I started to think they were toying with me again—that maybe it was all another trick, to get me to do what they wanted—but you’re back now. And you’re safe. And I—I’m so happy.”_

**I’m sorry.**

_“_ _You’re back now. That’s all that matters.”_

Kitagawa pulled Sakamoto away from the screen. “May I get ice for my drink, Mishima?”

“Uh-huh, sure,” Yuuki said.

“Ryuji, why don’t you help?”

“What?” Sakamoto said. “Dude, it’s just ice—okay. Okay. Don’t do that, man, that hurts.”

_“_ _I have something to tell you,”_ Akira said, as Kitagawa dragged Sakamoto away with a finger hooked in his collarbone. _“I told myself I would if I ever saw you again—I mean, when you came back. And now you’re back, so I—Yuuki, I…”_

Akira took several deep breaths, trying to ease off the sobs and hiccups that wracked his system. When he spoke again, he sounded much more like himself. _“I realized something when you were gone. It wasn’t the fact that whoever had control of the monitor couldn’t talk to me. I realized I didn’t want to talk to anyone else. I didn’t want anyone else to help me. I wanted you, Yuuki. I wanted you to come back so I could say good night, and good morning, and welcome back. I wanted you to come back so I could eat with you again, and be by your side as you worked. I don’t care that you’re some stranger on the other side of the monitor. I don’t care whether you’re a boy or a girl or a dog. You’re Yuuki, and I—”_

“Shit,” Sakamoto breathed from the kitchen, not even two feet away.

“Quiet,” Kitagawa hissed.

_“_ _And I love you,”_ Akira finished. _“I love you, Yuuki. I don’t want anyone else. I don’t want anyone else to finish this with me. I want you by my side as we see this through. I want you to see the end of this awful mess so we can laugh about it together, and cry when we need to, and be amazed at what the past me was willing to do to fight for what he believed in. I want you to see that.”_

“I want to see it, too,” Yuuki told him, hoping the way his finger shook wouldn’t ruin the connection. “I want to see all of it. I’m not going to leave, not again, not ever.”

And he meant it. He’d gotten this far; he could finish it. It would be the least he could do.

Besides, the hole he’d felt keenly over the past week was gone, filled up with some emotion Yuuki didn’t know the name to. He could guess what it was, though. Akira had already spelled it out for him.

_“_ _Not ever…”_ Akira sighed out, twisting and pulling locks of hair. At least that bit had gotten through. _“Does that mean—I mean, can I think that—”_

“I love you, too,” Yuuki said, and clicked the prompt for good measure. “Forever.”

Akira’s face—beautiful, smiling Akira, glowing despite the grease and the tears and the snot and the sweat stains on his shirt—wouldn’t be one he forgot anytime soon.

He didn’t even notice when Kitagawa and Sakamoto excused themselves and left.

He didn’t even remember telling himself not to fall in love.

 

* * *

 

 

The next day he woke up to a bombardment of messages on his phone.

Unknown: yo morning

Unknown: guess youre not awake yet, huh

Unknown: well thats fine I guess just checking in

Unknown: that monkey gave you your phone back right

Unknown: he better have cause I have questions

Unknown: like why havent you rt’d any of my stuff since I got back I thought we were pals

Unknown: geez

Unknown: >:o

**Who?** He sent, eloquent as always in his half-awake daze. His eyes threatened to slip shut and stay that way; today was Sunday, and some stranger was keeping him from blissful sleep.

Unknown: !! you cant have forgotten monas pretty blue eyes

Unknown: how could you

Mona? He didn’t know a Mona; he knew a Morgana. Morgana had pretty blue eyes, eyes as blue as the sky on a clear day. But Morgana wasn’t real.

The unknown number sent him a picture of a cat glaring at the camera as a hand shook it awake. Bright, pretty blue eyes. He kind of remembered that collar. The Featherman logo stamped on the cat’s tags stood out against the white bib.

Unknown: does alibaba not ring a bell or what

Oh.

**It does** , he sent. Alibaba. The girl with the cat with the pretty blue eyes; his Textter account had been awfully lonely without anyone to talk to aside from anons laughing at his pictures. He’d shut down notifications on his phone from the app. He hadn’t logged in in months; he’d disappeared, just like Alibaba did. **You left.**

Unknown: yeah sorry about that

Unknown: stuff happened you know the drill

Unknown: but I came back didnt I

Unknown: and now we gotta talk about that app

Unknown: come here later and ill score you some free eats

Unknown: okay good great goodbye

Alibaba sent him an address for some cafe out in the middle of nowhere—Yuuki had never heard of it, at least, which meant it either wasn’t trendy or it served weird food or both—and his eyes zeroed in on the battery.

It would need to charge. Akira deserved to rest a little longer, today, anyway; he’d conked out almost as soon as Yuuki’s confession left his mouth. The reminder of what had happened last night hit him square in the face, among other places.

Yuuki wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep like this. He took a lukewarm shower, dressed in the only casual clothes he seemed to own, and cleaned up the mess still sitting on the table from last night. Kitagawa had had the decency to put the used glasses in the sink, at least, and Yuuki made breakfast out of stale chips and potato sticks and flat soda. Anything unopened went back in the bag; he would take it with him when he left for the cafe, if only so his parents didn’t see the junk lying around their kitchen.

(They hadn’t come home last night. Yuuki wasn’t sure if he should feel relieved or not; he was in his third year of high school, for crying out loud, and while he appreciated the freedom, shouldn’t they care?)

He packed up changes of clothes for both of them, made a pair of bentos, and shoved his phone, charger and all, into his pocket. A bag was easy to steal; Yuuki was sure no one could take Akira away from him if he kept him close, a thumb tracing the edge of the case like it was Akira’s cheek.

He wished it was, as he dropped off the clothes and the lunches. If he handed them to the receptionists—one of them nice, always happy to see him helping out his folks, and the other too self-absorbed to even call his father down to the lobby so Yuuki always had to send a text and leave the bag—he wouldn’t even have to deal with his parents, busy as they were with meetings or brunches or whatever working adults did on Sunday mornings when they didn’t go home the night before. Freshen up in the bathroom of a cheap capsule motel? Head to a twenty-four hour gym to shower?

Yuuki didn’t know. Yuuki didn’t care.

 

* * *

 

 

He meandered around Shibuya until his stomach reminded him that day-old snacks didn’t make a meal, and figured that if Alibaba was promising him free food he could eat as much of it as he wanted, no matter how weird the fare was likely to be. He hopped on a train hoping her directions were right, and by the time he got off was so light-headed with hunger he was chugging a bottle of water just to stave off the worst of it.

Leblanc was a lot farther from the station than Alibaba’s directions implied, and Yuuki was embarrassed to admit he had to ask for directions twice in the maze of alleyways that made up Yongen-Jaya. Nestled in between a bar and a tobacco shop, the cafe did everything but draw the eye with its outdated, faded exterior. Yuuki knew that not every cafe had to be as outlandish as the maid cafes in Akihabara, but at least he could find them: the signs were huge, there were dozens of people milling around outside of one or the other attempting to peek, and he’d read so many stories of the maids on the streets advertising by grabbing potential customers by the arms and dragging them inside.

Leblanc simply squatted there; Yuuki glanced at the placard by the door, the chalk as faded as the paint, and double-checked his GPS. When everything told him that this was, in fact, the place Alibaba wanted him to be, he headed inside.

After wandering around in the sun for so long, Yuuki squinted into the dim cafe. There were lights, sure, but the manager hadn’t turned half of them on, probably cutting his bills by letting the sunlight in through the window—a feat that wasn’t well accomplished when the sun was hiding behind a highrise two blocks over—or maybe he wanted the place to seem homey, instead of dirty or old.

An older man with a goatee eyed him from a barstool, crossword in hand and TV droning on beside him. Yuuki glanced at the rows of jars behind the counter, wondering if he’d wandered into the wrong shop, when the man finally spoke up. “You here for Futaba?”

He jumped. He didn’t know a Futaba; Alibaba had given him the directions—but maybe they were one and the same. User names online didn’t have to be close to a person’s real name, after all. And hadn’t Sakamoto mentioned a Futaba?

Hadn’t Alibaba mentioned Sakamoto?

“Um, yes,” he said, hoping his hunch was right.

The older man gestured to some stairs hidden in a corner. “She’s up there. Tell them the food’ll be up soon. You don’t mind coffee, do you?”

“Uh, no, coffee’s fine,” he said. He’d never had coffee. If he wanted caffeine, he could get it from soda or energy drinks. But he could always just try it, and if it turned out he didn’t like it, drink one of the sodas he’d brought.

The older man grunted, flipped his crossword closed, and headed back behind the counter. Yuuki felt his face heat up; the only person in an otherwise empty cafe would have to be an employee, his brain finally told him, and weren’t the out-of-the-way cafes in anime managed by older men, anyway?

He shook the thought from his head and went up the stairs. Each one creaked under his weight. The sound had to be grating; whoever was waiting for him had to know he was coming up.

Sakamoto glanced up from a manga he was reading, said “‘sup, dude,” and turned back to it. Kitagawa was in a corner, sketching on a large piece of parcel paper on the floor, as absorbed in his pencilwork as he had been in his fingerpainting. A red-headed girl with headphones clamped over her ears was just as absorbed in a show playing on her laptop.

Yuuki took a seat on the couch next to Sakamoto and emptied his bag of snacks onto the table. A spring poked at his butt; it was harder to ignore than the silence in the room.

He took his phone out and started up a game and his recordings. He hummed along to the song Akira sang under his breath when he crafted sometimes and listened to a description of the process of curry spice combinations when his stomach reminded him, again, that stale snacks did not make a meal.

“Sheesh, you must be hungry,” the older man said, arms laden with trays. How he’d managed to get all the way upstairs without anyone hearing him and with so many plates in hand Yuuki wished he knew. “Help me with these.”

Yuuki did, moving the snacks out of the way. The man side-eyed the sodas on the table, then chuckled a bit as Yuuki moved them closer to Sakamoto, who grabbed one up absentmindedly, popped the tab, and started drinking.

The food snapped Kitagawa out of his funk. He took the rickety folding chair across from Yuuki. “Thank you, Boss,” he said. Sakamoto echoed it; Yuuki was quick to follow.

“No problem,” Boss said. “Let me know if you need a refill. And tell Futaba this is going to start coming out of her allowance. I’m running a business here.”

“Can do, Boss,” Sakamoto said.

“We are grateful for your continued hospitality,” Kitagawa said.

Yuuki made a mental note to pay for his meal.

They dug in, with the exception of the red-head Yuuki was starting to think was Futaba. She was still engrossed in her show, and Yuuki wondered if she was planning on coming up for air anytime soon. Wouldn’t she need to pee at some point? Or sleep?

“She’ll be fine,” Sakamoto said, nudging him with an elbow. “We made her promise not to binge anything today; she’s supposed to check the attic before she starts another episode.”

“Oh,” Yuuki said, and finally took a bite of the curry in front of him. It wasn’t standard cafe fare; he was used to the girls at school gossiping about fancy fruit teas and muffins and croissants, not about curry. But it was good curry, only slightly on the spicy side with a mellow sweetness underneath. He ate half of it before remembering the man setting down coffee, and he tried that, too.

It wasn’t as bitter as he thought it would be. Kind of nutty, almost, and despite the heat it cooled down the spices still lingering on his tongue.

It… worked. It was good. Great, even, the way he’d always imagined the food Akira would one day make him to taste. But it was a strange combination in a reclusive cafe; no wonder the place was almost empty.

Kitagawa finished his meal in record time and went down for seconds. Yuuki resisted the urge to just shovel food in his mouth; no matter what, he had to buy this now, and he wasn’t sure he could afford another helping.

“So, uh,” Sakamoto said, “about last night…”

Yuuki’s heart skipped a beat. That was right; Sakamoto and Kitagawa had both been there last night when Akira confessed to him. He hadn’t even had the earbuds in. They’d heard him _respond_.

“I ain’t judging, man,” Sakamoto went on. “Was really obvious that guy makes you happy. Shoulda seen it sooner. I’m, uh, I’m happy for you. Gettin’ a boyfriend ‘n all.”

“Thanks,” Yuuki said, sure the other shoe was going to drop. Sakamoto was bound to bombard him with questions, like how long he knew he liked guys or something, or if that was why he wouldn’t give him the lock code, or if that was why he’d kept Akira a secret this whole time, or if that was why Yuuki had said those things and ground into Sakamoto like a whore.

He didn’t. “Sorry ‘bout what I did last week. It was shitty of me, just takin’ your stuff like that. ‘M no better ‘n Kamoshida or that Madarame asshole.”

“It’s fine.” It wasn’t. Yuuki had degraded himself to get his phone back and it hadn’t even worked. He was surprised Sakamoto hadn’t beaten him to a pulp right then and there, famous temper or not.

Wasn’t that the sort of thing that got people beaten black and blue in the movies? Or had Sakamoto thought he was joking, like in one of those comedy routines?

He didn’t know.

“It’s not fine,” Sakamoto insisted. “I did all that, and—and you did all that stuff, too, and—it’s not fine. It’s not.”

Oh. So he was bringing it up. “Kamoshida never did anything like that,” Yuuki said, hoping he was reading Sakamoto’s thought process right. “He just stared a lot. The girls had it way worse.”

“He did that shit _to_ the girls, you mean.”

“He did it to Suzui. That’s all I know.” Yuuki hadn’t followed the case or the trial. He didn’t know if anyone else had had to endure what Suzui did; God help them if they did.

It took a while for Sakamoto to come back from that. Kitagawa came up in the meantime, plate even heavier than before, and started eating at a much more sedate pace. Less hungry, starving wolf and more human.

“We ain’t here to talk about Kamoshida, or what he did and didn’t do,” Sakamoto finally said. “We’re here to talk about Amamiya. You care about him. You must wanna bring him home.”

This again. “I told you, that’s not Amamiya.”

“Actually it is,” Kitagawa said. “His face is a near-perfect match, and I would not mistake that shade of gray in his irises for anything else.”

“And,” said a newcomer, as the red-head finally crouched down on the only other chair at the table, “I ran a facial recognition program on some of those vids you took and the mugshot that got made public. Near-perfect match, like Inari said, ‘cept it’s backed by science and not pigments in his eyeballs. That’s Amamiya. No doubt about it.”

Yuuki shook his head. “It’s not. I met him before Amamiya went missing. I met him before Amamiya even had to think about sleazy politicians. It was my first year at Shujin, Kamoshida’s volleyball practices were hell, and he was the only person I could talk to.”

“First year?” Sakamoto repeated.

“Yeah, first year.” Yuuki shut his eyes. “I thought high school was going to be a new start for me. I thought I’d join a club I liked, and make friends I could hang out with. Instead I got Shujin, hailed for its volleyball team that made it to the nationals—for the coach that won a gold-medal in the Olympics, of all things.” He chuckled dryly. “I liked volleyball, yeah, but I knew I wasn’t that great. I don’t know how I made it onto the team—there were dozens of other kids there way better than I was. Maybe Kamoshida thought I’d be a good success story, if the team ever managed to make it back to nationals.”

Sakamoto handed him a napkin; Yuuki wiped his nose on it, suddenly realizing that these were floodgates that he’d opened all on his own. That counselor after Suzui jumped never got this much info; Yuuki had known he’d try to spin everything into a positive light, but there was no positive light back then.

“Except practice was awful. It was way, way worse than it was when I was in middle school, back when you didn’t have to be all that good just to play the sport. I liked it enough back then to make the mistake of telling my parents. ‘You should join the team, Yuuki!’ they told me. ‘It’s good to exercise!’” He scoffed. “Except when it came to high schools, suddenly I had to pick one with a good volleyball team. They didn’t even ask if I wanted to keep going. They said it would look good on my college apps, or on my resume, or both. It didn’t matter what I wanted to do, and if I tried to convince them that I wanted to pick up something else, like coding or literature, they’d just start on my future.”

“That’s why you asked about our future plans,” Kitagawa said. “Once you lost volleyball as a reasonable avenue, you had nothing.”

“By the time those forms came around I hated volleyball,” Yuuki told them. “I can’t even look at a net anymore, much less a ball. I… guess I asked because I wanted to know that it was okay not to know what I wanted to do. That it was okay to do what I liked, and not just what looked best on paper.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Sakamoto said, with a crooked grin. “Me and ma, we had to have this long, boring conversation about it after last December.” His grin fell. “I wanted to drop out.”

Yuuki’s head shot up. “You did?”

“Yeah,” Sakamoto said. He leaned back to stare at the cobwebs on the ceiling; they’d gotten the ones closest to the floor, but no one was willing to drag a ladder upstairs or climb on top of the rafters to get the rest, apparently. “Told her I didn’t want to be a burden anymore. That finishin’ high school and goin’ to college didn’t guarantee me anything—not a good job or decent pay or nothin’. I figured pickin’ up a trade would be better, plus I wouldn’t hafta sit at a desk for hours and hours, you know? And you know what she said?

“She told me I couldn’t make it about what I got out of it. She told me if I just looked at the numbers and the figures and chose whatever was the highest pay, or the easiest work, or the highest hiring rate, I wouldn’t get anywhere. ‘Course, she said all that stuff about starting out on the bottom and workin’ my way up, too—but she said that sometimes the bottom’s just where you’re best.”

Kitagawa was nodding along, like he’d heard all of this before. Futaba sucked curry sauce off her spoon, fingers twirling her headphone cord. She looked bored.

“She told me she’d help me find a different school—somewhere that wasn’t Shujin, somewhere that’d work with me. And she told me to finish, too. And to go on to college, even if all I got was a lousy general studies degree or somethin’. Told me that quittin’ was something my dad woulda done. Told me that I had all the makings of an alcoholic in my genes, and did I want to turn out like he did, drinkin’ his earnings away and blamin’ everybody else for it?”

Sakamoto’s dad was an alcoholic?

Shit. No wonder he’d tried so hard with the track team; no wonder he’d gotten so pissed at Kamoshida for mouthing off about his parents. No one at Shujin needed to know that kind of thing.

“So I said I would,” Sakamoto finished. “Told her I’d do it, as long as she didn’t hate me for it. She didn’t need a deadbeat kid, too. Smacked me for that; said she’d be the one decidin’ if I was a deadbeat or not, and she knew a deadbeat when she saw one. Said as long as I kept worryin’ about others, I’d be fine.”

He went quiet. The contemplative frown etched onto his face made him look years older; Yuuki blamed the shadows, as Kitagawa had forgotten to turn the lights on when he came back, and the light from the window had dimmed.

“Sorry, you were talkin’,” Sakamoto said at last. “Didn’t mean ta go off at ya.”

“It’s alright,” Yuuki said. And for once he thought it was; he’d gotten good at just listening, after all, and Sakamoto seemed relieved to share it again.

But it was like he was parading his mother—his kind, well-meaning, yet stern mother—around the room. Like he was saying ‘look at how much she loves me!’

Jealousy curled in Yuuki’s gut. He reached for his coffee—empty. Sakamoto passed him a soda, and he gulped it down as Sakamoto collected up the plates. Futaba demanded seconds.

Once he was gone, they sat in the most uncomfortable silence Yuuki had ever felt. Here he’d been, complaining about his parents, when at least two of the others at the table had worse ones. Madarame had finally confessed to outright exploitation of Kitagawa last June, once the pressure from the media got bad enough, and Sakamoto’s dad was a deadbeat, abusive alcoholic. He didn’t know about Futaba, and decided he didn’t want to know.

The soda made the nausea worse. It felt like his whole stomach was churning, and his bladder felt fit to burst. “Sorry,” he said, “I need to use the toilet.”

Futaba piped up. Her voice wasn’t nearly as gravelly as his own; one of the perks of being a girl despite being a shut-in who barely talked to anyone, he supposed. “If you’re going to talk to Amamiya, you can do it here. We can handle a little PDA, no sweat.”

He turned a glare to Kitagawa, who only shook his head, but remembered that Sakamoto had said, right in this room, that Yuuki had a boyfriend. Futaba had been the one to pick apart his phone for ‘proof’ about Amamiya; she had to know he didn’t talk to anyone else.

Yuuki put his phone on the table, earbuds a tangled mess from his pocket, and bolted down the stairs, hoping the blush on his cheeks would be perceived as being from urgency, and not embarrassment.

Downstairs, Sakamoto glanced over from where he was washing the dishes before Yuuki darted inside the restroom.

He felt stupid. Stupidly stupid. Complaining about his parents—complaining about volleyball, and not just Kamoshida, either—complaining about his future, when all he had to do was commit to it. He could take it one step at a time, he knew, but one step at a time was too slow when everyone else already knew, already had game plans and schedules and support.

He let the water pool in the sink, cupping his hands to feel the way it worked around his fingers, and imagined it was Akira rubbing one soothing gesture into his skin over and over again and all at once at the same time. Ridiculous.

Yuuki would have to tell his parents about Akira at some point, wouldn’t he? One of them would start up wondering whether he had a girlfriend, or whether he was going to mixers, or whether he was even looking. He wasn’t sure what his father would think, but his mother wanted grandkids, which meant her precious baby boy with his indispensable future couldn’t be gay and dating a fucking virtual boy to boot.

(Except Akira was real—but then, the missing poster wasn’t really proof; Sakamoto and his friends were operating off the assumption that Akira was the missing Amamiya, after all, and Akira had come into his life before Amamiya even disappeared, just as he’d told them. So maybe Akira wasn’t real, and Yuuki was screwed.)

(Or, maybe…)

Yuuki shook his head, splashed water on his face, and stared at his reflection in the mirror for exactly three seconds before remembering his phone was upstairs with the people who’d stolen it from him barely a week ago.

His hands dripped on his way back up; he wiped them on his pants as he sat down at the table, phone exactly where he left it. The earbuds were untangled and lay in a neat circle nearby.

The bell in the cafe dinged; the TV drowned out anything else. Whoever the new customer was wouldn’t hear them.

“Anyway,” Yuuki said, deciding to pretend the last few minutes hadn’t happened, “he’s not Amamiya. Akira’s been stuck wherever he is since first year.”

“Akira?” Sakamoto said, brows raised. “Thought you said his name’s Ion-something.”

The flush returned to his face full-force. “That’s just what I call him,” he grumbled. “It’s better than ‘Ion.’”

“Does he know?”

“Probably not.” Telepathy wasn’t the best ways of communicating specifics, like names. The most Akira would know whether Yuuki was referring to him or not, but there was always the chance he’d picked up on it at some point, if Yuuki thought it hard enough.

“Can we see him?” Kitagawa asked. “We’d like to apologize for our behavior, and for scaring him.”

“I, well,” Yuuki said. He was doing great with the words today. He’d tripped over his own tongue more in the last hour than a ditzy anime character in a full cour, and if any more blood rushed to his head he’d likely get a nosebleed from the stress.

“Take your time sayin’ hello if you gotta,” Sakamoto said. His crooked grin wobbled, like he wasn’t completely on board with Yuuki having a boyfriend after all—or maybe he didn’t want to watch Akira gush. Who knew. “‘Taba was gonna show us some pics of her cat, anyway.”

Futaba shrieked, “No I wasn’t!”

Sakamoto shot her a look. Not quite a glare. ‘Read the damn room, wouldja,’ was Yuuki’s guess, and for good measure he tossed one Kitagawa’s way, too. Kitagawa sighed. “If I must withstand your terrible photography skills, so be it.”

They gathered at the end of the table, Futaba pouting and the boys looking resigned to boredom and lack of artistry. Yuuki plugged in his earbuds and his charger, and only started the app when Sakamoto started flipping through Futaba’s phone.

Only to exit out before it even fully loaded. “Wait,” he said. The trio glanced up. “Why do you care about Amamiya so much?”

_Why not me?_ he wanted to ask. _Why him, and not me? Aren’t I right in front of you?_

“Well,” Futaba said, after she and the boys exchanged glances, “aside from being a missing person—who we should care about, okay, blah blah blah and all that—but that sleazy politician swears up and down he never kidnapped the guy, or had the guy kidnapped or offed or sold into some trafficking ring run by some other sleazy guys like Kaneshiro. Which might be true—Amamiya was already charged with assault, he was already expelled from his high school, any chance he had at a future shot straight down the toilet—but the courts don’t believe him, especially after that woman showed up and started saying he did the same thing to her son. You follow?”

“Yeah,” he said. Akira mentioned maybe remembering a distinct bald head, and so far none of the men in his memories were as slickly bald as Shido was, so it had to be him, or someone like him. “Because knowledge of a bastard son would ruin his career, right?”

“Right! But the problem is that nobody can find anything proving that he did order the kidnappings. No phone records, no written records, nothing digital or otherwise. While he could have just ordered it in person, the only people Shido met with before Amamiya’s disappearance were cops and the judge he bribed, who all swore up and down that Shido only wanted the kid charged with assault. So Shido’s not going on trial for kidnapping, even though that’s what he was arrested for—it’s everything else the police have dug up in their investigation that’s kicking him in the balls right now, which means the missing kids are still missing, and people want to know where they are.”

“I told ya there were shrines for ‘em in Amamiya’s hometown, right?” Sakamoto said. “Get this: they’re freakin’ _huge_. Big as a food stand each, easy. But nobody’s rallyin’ behind ‘em just because of the missing kids: Ms. Akechi’s been fighting for single parent rights ‘n all that good shit. Me ‘n ma coulda used some of that growin’ up, you know? So she’s got all the single moms and dads on her side, sayin’ it ain’t right her son’s disappearance was overlooked just ‘cause the police thought she wasn’t a good mom.”

That’s what this was about? Single parenthood? It sounded more like revenge: Shido had been going around ruining so many people’s lives that Ms. Akechi was bound to find someone who still hated his guts and wanted to ruin him for it.

Didn’t they see that this was just a ploy to watch Shido burn?

(Well, he did deserve it.)

Futaba grinned. If Sakamoto’s was crooked, hers was outright menacing in the light reflecting off her glasses. “I don’t really care about Shido,” she said, “since the courts already know he tried to have my mom killed—”

“What the fuck,” Yuuki said.

“—no, what’s interesting is that on the night Amamiya went missing, he just—poof!—vanished into thin air. Right in the middle of the street, in fact. A private security camera on someone’s door caught it.” She shrugged. “But while Shido’s definitely still going to jail, no one knows what happened to Amamiya. He and Goro Akechi are practically the posterboys for all of this. People want to find them.”

“No one should have the right to take a child away from his or her parent,” Kitagawa said. “Outstanding cases aside, of course.”

Right. Madarame had admitted to murder via neglect, hadn’t he. What the fuck.

“If that’s what you think,” Yuuki said, standing up and tucking his phone back in his pocket, “then I can’t trust Akira to you.”

“Why the hell not?” Sakamoto yelled. Futaba’s chair hit the floor with an audible thump—and herself with a squeal—as he rocketed to his feet.

Yuuki gripped his phone, sure his knuckles were white with force. “Because you don’t want to help him,” he forced out of a throat that seemed too tight. “You just want to help yourselves. Satisfy your curiosity. Make yourselves feel better. You said it yourselves, last night: no one else stuck around this long. No one but me. I cared about him before I learned all of this, but you—you just want to find out—”

His knees buckled. He missed his chair by a hair’s breadth and hit the floor, tugging his phone out of his pocket; he clutched it to his chest as he gasped for air. Right now it was Akira. He had to show Akira he cared, even if Akira couldn’t see or feel him do it, even if it felt like his stomach was threatening to collapse in on itself.

“Shit, Mishima,” Sakamoto breathed.

Sakamoto and his friends were no better than anyone else. He didn’t know why he’d allowed himself to think otherwise. They were just using him and Amamiya and Akira as a way to kill time until they found something more entertaining, and then Yuuki and Akira would only have each other again.

Well, and Morgana, but the cat-boy didn’t exactly count.

“Don’t you dare do this to him,” Yuuki said. Shame coursed through him as his voice wobbled and shook and broke into sobs; these tears were for Akira, but no one deserved to see them. “Don’t you dare do this to him, after all he’s been through! Don’t come running after everything’s over and done with and make him remember it! He’s had enough!”

“Mishima.” Kitagawa was on his feet, too, hovering nearby, one hand outstretched. Yuuki could barely see it through the tears in his eyes.

“Make him?” Futaba asked quietly. “Does he not remember?”

He remembers plenty, Yuuki wanted to say. Dancing with Renaflask; getting embarrassed over a lewd figurine of himself; crying and fighting and dying for the few friends he’d managed to make. Struggling to understand the most basic of concepts even the children of that other world knew by heart; struggling to prove himself worthy of a title he didn’t even want.

Akira remembered plenty, and each memory hurt him. Maybe that was why his house was gradually disappearing, piece by piece. The world he was trapped in clearly wasn’t real, but if it vanished, what would happen to him? Would he still be over there, in that other dimension, or would he come home?

If he eventually remembered his life on Earth, would he even want to?

_“_ _I want to see this through with you at my side,”_ Akira had whispered last night as Yuuki lay in bed, curled up under his blanket. It had been the seventh time he said it, in so many words, and Akira weirdly believed in the power of the number seven. If he said it seven times, it meant he wanted it to happen—needed it to happen, even. _“No matter how bad it gets.”_ Then he joked, _“Even if the planet winds up exploding or something and I’m really dead for real.”_

He’d been making a lot of jokes like that last night. ‘If I’m dead.’ ‘If it turns out I’m dead.’ Finding out he’d died once had been bad enough; Yuuki didn’t want to find out he’d died again. Yuuki didn’t want to go through that again.

Akira didn’t know how much those jokes hurt. If it turned out Akira was dead for good—if the last memory turned out to be another death scene—if he got what he wanted and then disappeared, for good—

Voices swam above him. Yuuki was floating, Akira clutched as tightly to his chest as possible as the world shook all around him. If everyone else was willing to abandon Akira, and if everyone else was willing to abandon Yuuki, then they had to stick together.

They had to.


	4. The Third Year, Part Two

Yuuki woke to humming on two fronts. One was the earbud shoved into his ear at an awkward angle; the other wasn’t, and therefore didn’t matter.

He entertained the thought that he’d managed to worm his way into whatever pocket dimension Akira was in. That they could be together, in the flesh or not-flesh, but Akira’s voice was coming from the earbud, and the humming that wasn’t sounded distinctly feminine.

“I know you’re awake,” said the person who wasn’t Akira. “Don’t try to sit up just yet. You hit your head pretty hard on that table; I’m honestly impressed.”

Right. Sakamoto and his friends ganging up on him about Akira.

A tap somewhere on his left. Akira said, _“I see. Thank you for telling me.”_

Yuuki tried to protest—how dare someone else touch his phone, much less talk to Akira—but his voice refused to work. What came out was a scratchy mess that wished it was a word, and his throat stung as if he’d swallowed a thousand needles.

_“_ _Are you alright, Yuuki?”_ Akira asked. _“That person said you got hurt. She’s a doctor, though, I think, and she said she helped you.”_

Akira knew? In fact, the app had been open and running when Yuuki woke up, and he was slowly becoming aware of the ice bag on his temple. He reached up to touch it.

“Take it off if you want,” said the doctor who wasn’t Akira. “I need to check the area. Your friends told me you did sports a while ago. Are you familiar with head injuries?”

“Yes,” he croaked out. Kamoshida never hit anyone hard enough to cause a concussion, but he left plenty of bruises. The sprains and strains and migraines just came from long practices with no breaks, not even for water.

“So you know what to look out for, right?”

“Yes.” It didn’t feel as if he’d hit his head hard enough for that.

“Good,” said the doctor. She poked and prodded at his forehead; it felt odd through the chill of the ice. She was shining a penlight in his eyes before long, and Yuuki squinted through the glare. “You were pretty loud, you know. Mr. Sakura and I could hear you all the way downstairs. Want to tell me what that was about? Nobody else is here. They’re all out in the street, waiting.”

His stomach squirmed with nerves. He reached for his phone, brushing the screen with a thumb. _“Yuuki,”_ Akira said, in a way that suggested that he wanted to be there, holding Yuuki’s hand through it all, giving him a bit of comfort—or so Yuuki hoped.

“He calls me brave,” Yuuki finally said, after a few minutes. He wasn’t going to mention his growing concern that Akira was depressed or suicidal; for all they knew he was dead, and any worry Yuuki had over it would be misplaced. He definitely wasn’t going to mention how awful it felt to be the one responsible for Akira’s mental state: every memory had to be wearing him down a bit at a time, just like his crumbling house, and there was nothing Yuuki could do to help him aside from pick from a handful of prompts and hope things got better.

The doctor was patient, at least, despite her gothic garb being anything but the usual professional wear. “But he doesn’t know that I’m—I’m not,” Yuuki continued. “I’m a coward. I’m a coward, and because I couldn’t stand up to Kamoshida, Suzui tried to die. But I didn’t want him to hit me anymore. He told me I could go home if I called her to his office, so I did. I told her to go, then I went home and talked to Akira.”

Akira, who needed him more than Suzui did—even though Suzui was flesh and blood he could reach out and touch—or so he thought. If he’d been as brave as Akira thought, Suzui wouldn’t have had to go to Kamoshida’s office at all, and Yuuki might have gotten out of practice for a nice, long time with cracked ribs.

The doctor hummed. “Akira’s your friend, there?”

“He’s my boyfriend, now,” Yuuki admitted.

“Well, congratulations,” the doctor said. It didn’t sound too sincere—was she mad at him? He’d interrupted her meal with his shouting, hadn’t he? Shit, he’d disturbed Mr. Sakura’s business. “Was that all you were shouting about?”

“I guess I got mad at them,” he said softly. “I—I’ve been trying to help Akira, all on my own, for so long, and now they show up and say they want to help? When none of them did a thing to help themselves, or Suzui, or—”

“Or?” the doctor pressed.

“Or me,” he said. “Or anybody on the team, or any of the students Madarame took on…”

“Perhaps they didn’t have the means to help back then.”

“And they do now?” he scoffed. “Akira—he’s so far away he doesn’t know where he is. Sakamoto got some hacker to crack my phone and even she couldn’t find him. If I’m—if I’m the only one who can help him, why are they trying to butt in? And then they want to act like it’s fun for them, like it’s just a game for them to pick up when they’ve got nothing better to do and put down when they’re bored with it. But Akira’s a person. He doesn’t deserve to just be played with.”

_“_ _Yuuki,”_ said Akira.

“I don’t want them to say they want to help only to quit when it’s too hard. I don’t want them to say they have my back with this just to decide I’m too boring to stick with, or that they’ve got something else to do for weeks on end.”

“Well, what about Akira?” the doctor asked. “What does he want?”

Yuuki froze, breath caught in his throat. What did Akira want? Had Yuuki been misreading him this whole time? Had he never asked, or had Akira never said?

Akira picked up on this. He huffed out a laugh at the jumble of thoughts going his way and said, _“I want to find out who I am and why I’m here, with you at my side. It’s strange, but I want to help these people, too. They’re scared, just like you are, Yuuki. I suppose when people are scared they do things they never would otherwise. …And then I want to go home. To you.”_

_To me_ , Yuuki thought. _Not to his parents or his old friends but to me._

The doctor likely wouldn’t understand some of that, though. “He wants to come home,” Yuuki paraphrased, fighting to get the words out through the lump in his throat. He sniffled; the backs of his eyes burned.

_To_ me _!_

“If a bit of help will get him home sooner, isn’t that a good thing?” the doctor said. “You should probably tell your friends that. If they’re really your friends, they’ll understand.”

Yuuki still didn’t think so. The doctor hadn’t seen the look on Futaba’s face when she said Amamiya and Akechi had to be found—there had been hope shining in her eyes. What that hope was for—praise or recognition or just the giddy feeling of reuniting torn apart families—Yuuki didn’t care to know.

_“_ _Say, Yuuki? Don’t call me mean, but,”_ Akira said, twirling that same lock of hair. _“I—I don’t want anyone else to help. If—if these are the same people who took you away from me last week, I don’t want them to help. They don’t sound like they care enough to listen.”_

Them and Yuuki’s parents both. Like most people, in fact, content to go about their lives with their heads down so they couldn’t see the atrocities taking place in front of them. How long had Ms. Akechi been silenced? How long had Amamiya’s parents had to wait before taking matters into their own hands through the media?

How long had the volleyball team—or the track team—or Madarame’s students—or Kaneshiro’s victims had to suffer?

He let his silence go on a bit too long. The doctor spoke up. “Look,” she said, “I don’t quite understand what’s going on. If you want to talk to them, that’s fine—if you don’t, that’s fine, too. I’m not hear to talk your ear off about what you should be doing and how, understand?”

Yuuki nodded.

“I’m just here to make sure you aren’t in danger of dying, or walking off and dying on your way home, or dying in your sleep. Okay?”

Again, Yuuki nodded.

“I’m only a doctor,” she said, “and this was supposed to be my lunch break. Now, normally I’d charge you, but Mr. Sakura has agreed to pick up the tab—but it sounds like you wouldn’t like that, owing him for help you didn’t ask for.”

“No one just gives out freebies,” Yuuki muttered. He’d seen it used on 2chan a lot, in conjunction with everything from helping the homeless to charity dinners to would-be friends using each other. Besides, if his parents ever found out…

“Which is why I’m going to offer you a deal.”

Yuuki eyed her. A deal with a goth-doctor? What would she have him do, pay it off in free labor?

“You’re helping your boyfriend out, which is wonderful. But who’s helping you? It sounded like this was a long time coming.”

“You want me to see a shrink,” he guessed.

“I didn’t say that,” she said. “All I’d like for you to do is find someone you can confide in, whether that’s your boyfriend or a professional. It’s okay to cry when things get tough, you know.”

He didn’t. The entire first month of practice, Kamoshida had made them run suicide sets for every tear he saw his team shed and every groan he heard, whether it was in practice or off the court. And if his parents heard him crying…

But they were never home, were they? Too embarrassed by their worthless son to bother getting their own changes of clothes. Too embarrassed to text him to let him know they were sorry for making him do this over and over again.

_“_ _I’m here for you, Yuuki,”_ Akira said. _“And I want to be here for you. Isn’t that what a good boyfriend does? Besides, you’ve seen a lot of my past—let me get to know more of you. All of you.”_

“Akira,” Yuuki said, and swiped at his face. He was surprised there were anymore tears left for him to cry, but they still dripped down his face. The doctor handed him a napkin.

“So?” she asked. “Do we have a deal?”

Akira was here for him. Right now, that was all he needed—he could talk to Sakamoto and his friends some other time, if only to ream them out for being so selfish.

Yuuki nodded. “Deal,” he said.

 

* * *

 

The doctor let him go, giving him a tip on how much his meal was when he asked. Yuuki left a bill on the counter by the coffee siphons, tucked under a napkin holder so it didn’t blow away.

Mr. Sakura and the others were indeed outside. Sakamoto and Futaba wouldn’t look him in the eye when he came out. Kitagawa was the one who asked, “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Yuuki said, not wanting to go into specifics. Akira was back to humming in his ear; Yuuki let the noise surround him like a blanket. He turned to Mr. Sakura with a bow. “I’m sorry about the trouble I caused, sir.”

Mr. Sakura—the owner—just handwaved his apology. Smoke streamed from the cigarette in his hand. “Don’t worry about it. These things happen sometimes. You’re welcome back anytime, and I won’t make you sit with these guys again.”

Sakamoto scuffed his shoe against the pavement; Futaba looked like she’d done plenty of crying herself. Kitagawa stepped forward. “If you are ready to leave, Mishima, would you like to walk to the station together? I need to be getting home, and having a companion is always favorable.”

Yuuki wanted to ask about his art project, left lying on the floor of Leblanc’s attic—Kitagawa had been known at the rehab center to never leave a project until it was done to his satisfaction, a habit the other helpers had groaned about helping him break—but didn’t. It probably meant Kitagawa was making progress, and who was Yuuki to question him about it?

“Sure,” Yuuki said. If he remembered right, the station was down one of the alleys nearby.

He headed for it. Giving Sakamoto and Futaba the cold shoulder wasn’t right, but they’d said all that garbage and stolen his phone and snooped around on it and he wanted to make them squirm for a while. He didn’t want them to think they had a chance at being his friend again anytime soon.

“Mishima,” Kitagawa said, once they were far enough away from the cafe, “I don’t suppose you’d like an apology as well?”

“For what?”

“We upset you.”

“Badly enough that I passed out, yeah,” Yuuki said.

“And for that, we are sorry,” Kitagawa said. “Ryuji and Futaba were both more than taken aback when you began to hyperventilate. You are very protective of Ama—Akira, and we did not foresee such a reaction.”

As if grinding into Sakamoto the week before just to get him to drop the phone wasn’t enough of an indication; but Kitagawa wasn’t done. “May I ask what we said to offend you?”

“All of it,” Yuuki said.

“But, was there anything in particular?”

“You’re not going to leave me alone until I tell you, are you?”

“I would like to clear the air as soon as possible,” Kitagawa said. “If that means pestering you until you do, then I’m sorry, but I will. We only wish to help reunite Amamiya and Akechi with their families, that is all.”

Yuuki thought for a few moments. Kitagawa was willing to listen; better yet, Kitagawa knew more than that doctor did about Akira, and likely about Yuuki himself, and hadn’t seemed to tell a soul yet. If Sakamoto had managed to keep his mouth shut about about them, Yuuki would eat his laptop’s hard drive.

“Kamoshida was—bad,” he finally decided on. “And he got away with so much. I don’t think my parents would have cared if I told them—they would have said I was blowing everything out of proportion so I had a reason to quit, and what would that do for my future?”

He had to wonder what it meant, that he could tell the doctor one thing and Kitagawa another. Maybe he already knew that Yuuki was still pissed and wasn’t going to let them off lightly and was just letting him talk, letting him vent.

“So they didn’t care. The staff at Shujin didn’t care. I tried going to the police, who contacted the school and then didn’t do anything else, so they didn’t care, either. But it’s not like Akira cared—I’d be surprised if he noticed anything wrong—he was just… happy. To see me. Every time I opened up the app, he’d be smiling at me. He’d ask me how my day went, even before I could really tell him anyway. He’d gush about some new recipe he was trying to make, or something strange he’d seen—and he’d always pause a bit, as if he was waiting for me to respond, even when I couldn’t. Like he wanted me to. It was nice.”

He was rambling. This wasn’t what upset him. This wasn’t even close; or maybe it was, and he just wanted to talk to someone about Akira.

“Akira was all I had that first year. But—he has amnesia, you see—when we started uncovering his lost memories, I started to think I didn’t have it that bad. No one ever tried to rip the shirt off my back in the middle of the street; no one ever tried to frame me for attempted murder; no one ever shot down my plane in the middle of the sky. Akira’s been through so much, Kitagawa. Kamoshida feels like a cartoon villain by now.”

“But he is your cartoon villain,” said Kitagawa.

“Yeah,” Yuuki agreed. “He’s mine. Anyway, Akira’s been through so much. Sakamoto said he had a lot more help in the beginning, but now it’s just me. And I—I don’t want to see him hurt anymore. If he dies again, I won’t be able to take it. If it turns out that he can’t come home, I won’t be able to take that, either. Akira’s everything to me. And then you all come along, acting like this is all fun and games for you, when for Akira it’s life or death, and I—”

He was crying again. By the time he got home his face would be swollen. He hoped that this would be yet another night that his parents decided to stay at work; Kitagawa stopped him, steering him off the street and into a little nook with a vending machine.

Kitagawa stared at the selection of drinks. He tapped his pocket. “Akira was there for you when no one else was,” he summarized softly. “And now you feel you have to be strong to help him regain what he’s lost, but that is a Herculean task in its own right. You can’t compare yourself to him, Mishima.”

A rattle, a thunk. Kitagawa held out a can of iced coffee like a peace offering, bar code first. It made Yuuki want to laugh; instead he wiped at his face with his shirt. He should’ve taken a handful of napkins with him when he left the cafe.

Kitagawa wasn’t done: “And you shouldn’t allow said task to consume you. I’ve missed your company, to be honest. It is nice, sitting and working in companionable silence. Having someone by my side who, while they may or may not share my interests, are willing to share their time with me. I didn’t have much of that growing up. Just lessons, cleverly disguised as father-son bonding. Just other students, so focused on making pieces for Madarame that they could never see past their canvases.”

The artist scowled. Madarame, as usual, ruined his conversations once more; Yuuki took the coffee and pressed it to his eyelids, knowing they were already puffy and red. “I didn’t even see the note you gave me,” Yuuki admitted. He’d done a lot of that today. “I just saw the picture. I didn’t even think—I mean, I thought it was a parting gift or something. Like you were cutting ties with me, and felt you owed me something, even though I wasn’t that great as a helper-buddy or whatever.”

Rattle. Thunk. “You were fine enough. You still are, Mishima. I am finally beginning to see what Suzui worried over so. You’ve been hurt badly, and you’re just as good as the rest of us at hiding it. But now you are reaching your breaking point. We want to ease your burden, if only a little.”

Akira was still humming away in his ear. Akira wouldn’t abandon him for being weak—but then, Akira _couldn’t_ abandon him. Akira could give him the cold shoulder and refuse to talk to him for days on end but he couldn’t delete the app off of Yuuki’s phone and cut ties permanently.

“We are worried about you as well, not just Amamiya and Akechi,” Kitagawa said. “Shutting yourself away from the world won’t help you.”

“That’s…” Yuuki wanted to fabricate some lie. That he’d been busy with college apps, or his summer homework, or cleaning the apartment; Kitagawa would know each one for the lie it was, however, since apparently while Yuuki had been absorbed in his coding Kitagawa had been studying him. It was weird to think he was so transparent as to be seen through by a guy who used to think a meal could consist of a bag of expired bean sprouts.

“You’ve already said how important Akira is to you, Mishima,” Kitagawa went on, “but you should consider that he’s important to others, as well. His parents, for example. They did, after all, put up missing posters for him.”

The posters. “There’s still no proof that’s Akira.”

“True,” Kitagawa said. “But there is no proof that it _isn’t_ him, either. Some of the things he mentioned when we had your phone were concerning. He began to wonder, rather specifically, if ‘that bald-headed sleazebag of a politician got hold of you.’ That sounds like Shido, doesn’t it?”

It did, but he didn’t want to admit it. Akira had mentioned remembering Shido, especially after Yuuki showed him the news broadcast, but the problem of Amamiya’s disappearance _after_ Yuuki met Akira still wasn’t solved. There was the possibility of non-linear timelines or parallel dimensions or whatever, but Yuuki was trying not to think about that. Goro had been floating around that dimension for five thousand years. He’d lived and died over there—was there anything of Goro to bring back, aside from a soul? Would there be anything of Akira to bring back?

He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know, and yet he kept coming back to it, like an addict to the bottle. There were too many ways for this to end, and he didn’t like most of them. “I don’t want to talk about this right now, Kitagawa.”

Kitagawa blinked. “Of course,” he relented. “Today has been rather trying for you, hasn’t it? Come; the station is this way.”

Kitagawa didn’t say anything more. He boarded a train going the opposite direction from Yuuki’s only after pressing a note into his hands, then stared at him as the train pulled out.

Yuuki watched it go, Akira still humming in his ear.

 

* * *

 

“This is very good, Yuuki,” his father said.

“Thanks, Dad,” Yuuki mumbled. Stir-fry was something Akira enjoyed almost as much as curry; if Yuuki was going to be a good boyfriend, he should learn how to cook his boyfriend’s favorite foods, shouldn’t he?

“How has school been?”

“Fine,” he said. “How has work been?”

“I’m looking at a raise soon,” his father said. “Fat lot of good it does me, when I can’t even spend time with my own son.”

He nearly dropped his chopsticks. Startled, he glanced up to see his father hunched over his plate, idly picking through the pile of rice and vegetables. “Huh?”

“You heard me, Yuuki. All the money in the world doesn’t mean a thing if your mother and I miss watching you grow up. When did you even learn how to cook?”

“I watched some videos online,” Yuuki lied. Akira had taught him after catching a fleeting thought Yuuki had had over wanting a home-cooked meal. He’d been patient, too, and more than willing to eat the same thing three days in a row as he helped Yuuki practice.

“Videos online,” Yuuki’s father grumbled. Hirotaka Mishima wore a look that could only be a mixture of disgust and self-loathing. “I should be the one teaching you these things,” he said to his plate, “not some stranger on the internet.”

“It’s fine, Dad,” Yuuki said. The man had rarely been around as it was, even when Yuuki was younger. It had always been his mother who came home from work early to do chores around the house while Yuuki studied or played games and stayed out of her way.

“It’s not fine,” Hirotaka said. He set down his chopsticks and buried his face in his hands. “It’s not fine. I’m your father. So I need to be a father—teach you what it means to be a father, and what it means to be a man. God, you’re already in high school. You’re about to graduate. And what have I done accept push you to join that school and that volleyball team? Do you know what it’s like to hear that your son’s being abused from the _news_? To have your coworkers ask, ‘Doesn’t your son go to that school, Hirotaka?’ Have I been so awful a father that you didn’t think you could tell me?”

“The school was really good at covering his tracks,” Yuuki said. Sakamoto’s mother had gone to the police about the incident that broke her son’s leg, Sakamoto had admitted last year; Kamoshida had still swaggered around the school like a king in his castle days and weeks and months after. Sakamoto had been the one to take all the blame for it in the end; students still whispered about it now, long after Kamoshida had been proven guilty.

But this was his father, who was certainly acting like he was trying to understand. “And would you have believed me?” Yuuki asked.

“I don’t know,” was the admittance. “High school is harder than middle school, and college is harder than high school. I don’t know. I thought you loved volleyball. You always looked happy playing it before; how did I not see—how did I not know—”

Yuuki bit back all the remarks he wanted to say: because you were never around; because work was all you cared about; because you’d convinced yourself that I was happy and that was good enough; because, like mom, all you could see were the promises being dangled in front of you. “People change, Dad,” he said instead.

“That, I know,” his father said with a laugh that bordered on hysteria. “And some people don’t change at all.”

“What does that mean?”

Hirotaka didn’t answer. He scrubbed at his face and then returned to his meal as if the conversation never happened.

Yuuki, confused and wondering where this was going to go, let him.

 

* * *

 

Things died off after that. Sakamoto’s group of friends didn’t pester him about Amamiya or Akira if he joined them a day or two out of the week hanging out in Leblanc’s attic. He spent plenty of time with Akira while he did his homework or practiced Python sequences over the net, and Akira’s house crumbled more and more as they watched his past. None of the others commented on what was going on—likely because they had no idea, and Yuuki, who had been there from the beginning, was still struggling to grasp it—each of them preferring to do their own things.

It was Kitagawa who kept him updated on the Shido trial and the Amamiya case. Sakamoto and Futaba were the ones collecting the info, but it was Kitagawa who passed it on to him “in case Akira wants to know.” The knowing glint in his eye pissed Yuuki off, but if Akira never remembered his real name, they would never have any proof.

Akira, he decided, looked very good in emperor’s robes. The only problem was…

**Was that your first kiss?**

Akira flushed all the way to the tips of his ears. _“It was for the ceremony!”_ he defended. _“I had to, to gain the voice of the emperor! It couldn’t be helped!”_

**It’s still a kiss.**

_“_ _It’s religious!”_ Akira pouted. _“It doesn’t count! B-besides, I want my first kiss, the one I’m going to remember for the rest of my life, to be with you, Yuuki!”_

**Me too.** At least Yuuki had something to look forward to, now. Once Akira was back home—wherever on Earth that happened to be—they could be happy together. Akira would never leave him. They could hold hands or kiss or just cook together—as long as Akira didn’t leave him, or lie to him, or—

_“_ _You too?”_ Akira smiled. He looked best that way, although his pouting, indignant face was awfully cute. _“Then we’d better hurry! You’d better not keep me waiting, Yuuki!”_

A wink and a devilish smirk as he teased sent blood rushing throughout Yuuki’s body. It was quick as lightning and Yuuki thought it the most unfair thing in the world. He couldn’t look at an Akira like that for very long.

(Was Akira trying to string him along? No, it couldn’t be; he’d been hurt when Yuuki went missing that one week, and so overjoyed to have him back Akira had confessed.

But he could be, and a part of Yuuki screamed that that just wasn’t allowed. Akira was the one who was supposed to do the wanting. Akira was supposed to do everything Yuuki told him, and be happy doing it—)

Sitting in his empty apartment that night—Hirotaka’s raise having done nothing to decrease his workload—Yuuki made a decision.

Akira did not deserve the person Yuuki was becoming.

 

* * *

 

Mr. Sakura was all too happy to give him the number of the clinic the doctor worked at. She, in turn, was all too happy to refer him to a lucratively expensive therapist who knew the meaning of the phrase ‘doctor-patient confidentiality’ and wouldn’t laugh behind his back about some of the more strange goings-on in his life.

He started his sessions that week.

 

* * *

 

“ _Merry Christmas, Yuuki!”_

**Merry Christmas,** Akira.

He wondered how the Amamiyas were spending Christmas.

He wondered how Ms. Akechi was spending Christmas.

… He wondered how his parents were spending Christmas.

 

* * *

 

Life after the New Year was dull. Yuuki studied and studied and cooked; on occasion he cleaned, or showed up at Leblanc to ream out Sakamoto for not studying. Kitagawa was going to try and become a teacher, of all things, ‘just in case an artist’s salary isn’t enough.’ He was thinking about his meals, finally, and having a comfortable enough place to sleep in instead of on the floor of a drafty shack with no central heating or air conditioning. Yuuki still wondered if the electricity in that place worked.

Futaba was adamant that when she graduated she’d already be working in cybersecurity and no one in the room doubted her, though Yuuki repressed the jealousy that rose like bile in his throat at the thought that she didn’t have to worry like the rest of them.

Yuuki never told them what he was aiming to be. He still didn’t know, was still too much of an amateur compared to Futaba, was still too hung up on Kamoshida and his parents to be a functioning adult.

His therapist told him that was normal. That not everyone knew what they wanted to be—and sometimes those dreams didn’t work out. The important part was to keep going, even if he wanted to stop, the same way he and Akira did as they watched Akira take on the role of emperor of a dying planet. There were too many hard choices for the past Akira to make, and no time for regretting a single one of them.

_“_ _I hope he doesn’t forget about Goro,”_ said Akira, after a stressful memory watching citizens panic over evacuation procedure. The entire population of the planet was supposed to board one single, giant ship and be blasted off into space to colonize someplace else while the sun loomed over them like a ticking time bomb; who wouldn’t panic, in a situation like that?

**He won’t.**

Goro and Akira were in the same boat, after all. They were dragged there under the same circumstances—there was no way the past Akira would forget that Goro’s fate could be his own.

_“_ _I wonder, though,”_ Akira said. _“If they colonize some other planet, won’t all of this just keep going? I don’t want anyone to go through this ever again. No one deserves to be treated this way,_ _r_ _ight? It’s basic, isn’t it? Couldn’t these people have found some other way than—than this?”_

Yuuki didn’t know. He didn’t understand half of what was going on. It was likely they’d tried everything and this was the only solution that worked.

_“_ _And another thing: we’ve been seeing more memories that aren’t mine. I wonder why.”_

**That is concerning…**

_“_ _Maybe someone decided I needed to see these? If that’s the case, though, then I can’t be dead, can I? You’re supposed to see your own life when you die, but this isn’t just mine…”_

**I don’t want you to die.**

Akira looked surprised by that. A slow smile bloomed on his face. _“I don’t want to die, either. And I don’t want you to die on me before our first kiss! Promise, okay?”_

**I promise.**

 

* * *

 

He had to ask Akira for a break for his entrance exams. Yuuki had been stupid, sending out applications to anywhere he could think of, and now his testing week was so crammed he barely had time to breathe.

Akira understood, and promised him a surprise when it was over.

(Morgana, in an increasingly-rare appearance, promised him a very special card if he got a few more sharls. The sharls were getting harder and harder to come by—the last time Yuuki had gone bar code hunting, only some limited edition ration from a vending machine in an airsoft shop had gotten him one. Yuuki promptly blew the rest of his money buying capsule rations and stuffing them in his bag, the owner giving him the meanest stink eye he could muster.

Yuuki was not going back to that shop.)

Except when it was over, Sakamoto invited him to a party at Leblanc. Yuuki, too exhausted to say no, said yes.

It had been a long time since Yuuki had gone to a party. Mr. Sakura closed his shop down for the evening and let Futaba play Featherman reruns on the TV in the corner. Yuuki finally met Kitagawa’s guardian—a man with a stern face hidden behind a dorky bowlcut and a pair of glasses—and Sakamoto’s mother—a woman who jumped at the chance to give him the longest, tightest hug he’d ever received and smelled of curry spices and strawberries—both of whom thanked him for being friends with their boys.

Yuuki didn’t know what to say. Futaba scarfed down food faster than she could chew it—for once, Mr. Sakura wasn’t serving curry—and said something through a mouthful.

“The food’s not going anywhere, Futaba,” Mr. Sakura said, setting a glass of water in front of her, a fond glint in his eye. “Slow down a little.”

Futaba downed her water faster than the food and said, “I—no, never mind.”

“If you’re trying to say I’ve been an ass who doesn’t deserve friends, I know that already,” Yuuki said.

“Uh, no,” Futaba said. “I was going to say it’s a shame your boyfriend couldn’t be here.”

Yuuki froze. Cold dread curled in his stomach and sank into his fingers; he stuffed his hands in his pockets and ran a thumb down the side of his phone.

“Oh, that’s right!” Sakamoto’s mother said. “It must be so hard, being in a long-distance relationship. It’s important to communicate in relationships like those, you know!”

“Ma!” Sakamoto shouted.

“What? It is, isn’t it?”

“That’s not what I—”

“You told her?” Yuuki rounded on the blond, who threw his hands up—to protect his face? To calm him down?—and made several croaking noises as words tried and failed to leap out of his throat.

Kitagawa’s guardian—Nakanohara, a civil servant, how nice—spoke up: “Yusuke told me as well. It isn’t uncommon in this day and age, and I’ve heard it’s far more likely when you find your partner in an online chatroom. We… aren’t trying to judge you,” he added at the end, as Yuuki turned pale.

They thought he met Akira online. In some forum somewhere.

No, what was important was that they knew. At some point it had slipped out of both Sakamoto’s and Kitagawa’s mouths—and apparently from Futaba’s as well, if the way Mr. Sakura was holding his tongue and glancing at the commotion out of the corner of his eye was anything to go by—and now they knew, when Yuuki hadn’t even told—

“Don’t tell me,” Sakamoto’s mother laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, “your parents don’t know?”

Yuuki took a breath to calm down and answer.

The door to the cafe opened, bell jingling. Mr. Sakura turned, saying, “Sorry, we’re closed,” and cut off, clearing his throat.

“Oh?” said the goth-doctor from so many months ago. “Are we interrupting something?”

‘We.’

Yuuki noticed the woman behind her. It was like staring at a picture of Goro twenty or thirty years from now: she had the same honey-brown hair and russet eyes in almost exactly the same face. “Um, hello,” she said, in almost exactly the same voice. “Someone named Alibaba invited me?”

Futaba waved at her. Mr. Sakura sighed. “No wonder I had to buy all of this food,” he said.

“Inari’s going to eat most of it anyway,” Futaba responded. “We needed extra, after taking him into account.”

“Yusuke’s been very good about overeating,” Nakanohara said, “so I don’t think you need to worry about that.”

Futaba shrank further into her crouch at a table as Yuuki eyed her with suspicion. The conversation went on around them; Sakamoto’s mother made to take her hand back. Yuuki clasped it in his own. Maybe she saw the anguish on his face; she squeezed back.

Ms. Akechi was right here in the cafe. She was no longer halfway across Japan in a small town that ostracized her for being a single mother; she was here, and Yuuki realized belatedly that Shido’s trial was this week. Of course she would want to watch the man who almost ruined her life get put behind bars.

“I was sitting in on the trial, you see,” she was telling Mr. Sakura, and of course Yuuki was right, “and Alibaba has always been a good friend to me ever since the investigation started—and well, once she knew I was here, she told me about your cafe. I’ve never been in Tokyo before, so it took me some time to find.”

“I guess I shouldn’t be upset about the advertising,” Mr. Sakura said, “but as you can see, we’re closed today. Although, since it’s Futaba who invited you, I can serve you some coffee, if you’d like.”

“Coffee is fine, thank you,” she said.

Futaba was shaking her head, now. For what? Hadn’t she called Ms. Akechi here to guilt Yuuki into spilling the beans? Kitagawa already said they knew about Akira’s connections to the kidnapping cases, in so many words.

“You’re right,” Yuuki told Ms. Sakamoto. “I should tell them. I should tell them I know where Goro Akechi and Ren Amamiya are.”

He dug his phone out of his pocket, conscious of the way the cafe went dead silent. Ms. Akechi froze in her seat, stiff as a pole; the goth-doctor put a hand on her shoulder.

Yuuki opened the app, unplugged his earbuds, and turned the volume up as high as it would go.

_“_ _You’re back, Yuuki!”_ Akira greeted him. _“Are your exams over? Did you do well? I hope you did; you’ve been working so hard getting ready for them!”_

Whatever his surprise was, it was going to have to wait. He pressed a thumb to Akira’s head.

He hummed. _“Akechi? Oh, Goro’s mom? If you say that’s who it is, I believe you; so she’s with you right now? I’m surprised; Goro’s been here for so long—oh, but maybe the qualia affected something,_ _o_ _r maybe time works differently here? I’m not too sure how all of that works, sorry. And I can’t exactly ask anybody. You know Morgana won’t tell me anything.”_

He pushed Akira to keep talking. Ms. Akechi was looking at him like a deer in headlights, wide-eyed and with disbelief. _“I’m glad she hasn’t given up on him. He’ll need someone there for him, after all of this. I have you—but Goro doesn’t have anybody over there. I don’t know how I can talk to you, Yuuki, but I know this: Goro is alone. He doesn’t have someone like you, coming to see him everyday. He doesn’t have someone to help keep him sane._

_“_ _I’m worried for him, Yuuki. If he remembers all of this—if we can ever go home—he’s not going to be okay. He might not ever get better. What happened to him—what happened to us both—it’s not fair, but there’s nothing we can do about it. And Goro’s been left alone for so long I don’t know how he’ll handle society anymore. Do you remember when they went to that amusement park, and the mascot gave him a hug, and he acted like it was the softest thing in the whole universe?_

_“It was like—like no one had ever been kind to him, or maybe he couldn’t remember what it felt like anymore. Drifting around for so long—not being able to touch anything—not being able to talk to someone else—if that happened to me, I’d go crazy. I don’t—I don’t want that to happen to me. I want to go home! I want to go home, and I’ll bring Goro with me, even if I have to—”_

He broke off with a loud sob.

“People from other dimensions are a commodity over there,” Yuuki told the room. “Apparently they’ve got some kind of special ability that lets them overlook the entire universe. Five thousand years ago, Goro Akechi was summoned to save a dying planet from extinction. I’m pretty sure he died doing it, and his soul’s been wandering over there ever since.”

“My Goro’s dead?” Ms. Akechi whispered.

“He’s got a new body, so no, he’s not,” Yuuki said. That was probably the thing that freaked him out the most: the dead were supposed to stay dead, except in horror movies. They didn’t just… inhabit new bodies. Then again, soulless shells didn’t exist in real life, either.

“That’s some sci-fi bullshit right there,” Sakamoto said. “You’re telling us they’re in another dimension?”

“And it’s dying,” Yuuki said. “Akira’s supposed to be fixing that.”

“You said he didn’t know where he was!” Futaba accused.

“He doesn’t. It’s complicated.”

“It gets worse?!” Futaba and Sakamoto shouted in unison.

“Goro mentioned that his existence over there caused all of this mess,” Yuuki said, ignoring the way they gaped at him. “Which is why Amamiya got taken next; Goro’s soul isn’t supposed to be there, and the universe is falling apart because it can’t handle it, and someone decided, well, it worked once, so why not try it again? But some of the people over there are people with power who know Akira and know that they can’t keep doing this. I want to think they’re going to find a way to send them both back and to keep this from happening again.”

“So that _is_ Amamiya, timeline to be determined,” Kitagawa said. “His parents should know.”

“No, they shouldn’t,” Ms. Akechi said, her voice oddly flat. “Do you think they want to hear ‘We know where your son is, but he’s trapped in another dimension!’ Do you know how crazy that sounds? I can’t believe this!”

_“_ _You know what I should do, Yuuki?”_ Akira said, very softly. _“I should promise to stay friends with him. He’d like that, right? That we could be friends, in this dimension or any other. And, because we’re friends, we’ll get to meet each other’s parents, right? I bet his mom is really nice. Goro said she makes the best pancakes in the world, remember? I’d like to try them. And he can try my curry, too.”_

“Curry?” Mr. Sakura said.

“This is insane!” Ms. Akechi shouted. She slapped the bartop with her hands, her face screwed up and red with rage. “My son! Dead! In another dimension! I can’t believe you have the nerve to tell me this nonsense!”

Ms. Sakamoto wasn’t giving him pitying looks anymore. She looked suspicious—as if she thought what Ms. Akechi began to say next: “Is this why you told me to come here? So you could lie to me? If my son is dead, you should just say so, instead of coming up with this—this—this farce! Are you all in on it? Did Shido tell you to do this?”

“As if I’d side with the guy who tried to have my mom killed!” Futaba yelled. It lost some of its weight when her voice cracked and she buried her face in her arms.

Akira picked up on the tension in the room. _“Yuuki,”_ he said softly, _“let me talk to Goro’s mom? Please?”_

Alone, Yuuki knew. But this was a mess Yuuki got himself into—it needed to be a mess he got himself out of, too, without relying on others to explain.

Akira wouldn’t have any of that. Yuuki fed him everything—that this was his fault and his alone for opening his big mouth, that Akira couldn’t prove anything from that other dimension, that he just might make Ms. Akechi feel even worse—but Akira looked at him with steely determination in his eyes.

Yuuki loved those eyes. Loved the way they spoke more than words could ever say, loved the way he could read them like a book when real people’s were so clouded, loved the way they made him feel safe when he needed to and—more increasingly of late—chastised when he needed to be.

( _“You need to be eating_ real _food, Yuuki!”_ Akira had told him, eyes flaring like fire. _“There’s no love in instant noodles!”_ )

He couldn’t say no.

“Ms. Akechi, Akira wants to talk to you,” he said. “Just you. Will you listen?”

“I don’t need to listen to a cohort of Shido’s!”

“Please,” he said. “Just for a minute.”

Ms. Akechi took several shuddering breaths, head tucked between tense shoulders. She raised a hand for his phone and he passed it to her, earbuds dangling from his fingers. She didn’t take them. “Whatever he has to say, you can hear it, too,” she ground out.

_So she has witnesses,_ he thought.

_“_ _Good evening, Ms. Akechi,”_ Akira said, after a moment of silence. _“Please don’t be mad at Yuuki. None of this is his fault. He’s trying to help me; he’s been by my side for years, now, and I know this has to be just as hard on him as it is on me. In fact, it’s probably worse: you’ve just proven that no one will believe him when he tells them where Goro and I are. He’s been carrying that burden alone for a while now.”_

“God,” Ms. Akechi said as he talked, “that’s Amamiya. That’s the Amamiya boy. But—what’s wrong with that house?”

_“_ _I’m not going to say I know what Goro’s going through,”_ Akira continued on, _“as he’s been through so much more than I have. But we’re both in this boat together, Ms. Akechi, whether he realizes that or not. We both want to go home—him to you, and me to Yuuki—and I’m going to do my hardest to make him realize that_ _we should working together, instead of apart_ _. I’ll get him home to you, I promise.”_

Only Yuuki heard what he wasn’t saying: _or I’ll die trying._

_“_ _So, please,”_ Akira said. _“I don’t know how long it will take. I don’t even know if he’ll be the same. But if Goro knows you’re still out there, waiting for him—maybe he’ll listen to me. Maybe we can finally put aside our differences and work together, as we should have from the beginning. Just—please—don’t give up on him coming home to you. Don’t write off what Yuuki and I are telling you. That’s all I ask.”_

The goth-doctor was looking over her shoulder at the phone screen, one well-manicured hand rubbing circles into the mother’s back. She was the one who gave the phone back to Yuuki when Akira was done; he said goodbye and exited the app in the most tense silence he thought he’d ever heard.

“I,” started Ms. Akechi, getting out of her seat. “I think I’m going to go. Process this. I—well—if I need to contact you, Alibaba, I will. Thank you for the coffee, sir.”

“I’ll walk you to the station,” the goth-doctor said, with a look Yuuki couldn’t read pointed his way. Was she proud, or exasperated? “Yongen’s streets are like a maze even on a good day.”

The bell jingled. Too cheery. Yuuki rolled up his earbud cord and stuffed it in his pocket next to his phone.

“Well,” Nakanohara said.

“Well,” Ms. Sakamoto said.

“What a waste of coffee,” Kitagawa said, and gulped down Ms. Akechi’s cold cup.

“What a waste of a party,” Sakamoto said. “Not that I mind ya doin’ it, but why, Mishima?”

Yuuki found an interesting piece of floorboard to examine. “I thought you called her here to get me to talk. You’ve been insinuating I know something this whole time.”

“Maybe a little,” Futaba admitted, and ignored the way Sakamoto gaped at her. “But I really thought she needed to know there were physical people outside of her friends and caseworkers who cared. I didn’t know it would turn into—into an episode of Galactic Odyssey like that. Extra-dimensional kidnapping? Magical third eyes? It’s kinda cool, but it’s kinda weird.”

“That’s why it’s called ‘fiction,’” Nakanohara said, “because it’s not real. Yusuke, tell me you don’t believe this.”

“While it is rather hard to believe, going this far for a prank is far more than just distasteful,” Kitagawa said. “Mishima isn’t the type to come up with something like this. Shido, maybe, but he’s quoted many times as barely recalling Ms. Akechi. She was too lowly for him to bother remembering, even after cementing his campaign platform, and I doubt he would do such a thing to every woman he slept with or took advantage of over the years.”

“Shido also said he had no idea there was a kid,” Futaba said. “Said he paid Ms. Akechi off to get rid of it and thought that was the end of it. He didn’t know she didn’t go through with it.”

And then, not only was Goro unwanted by his own father, but he was used and tossed aside by the people of Ra Ciela. He had every reason to be angry, and every reason to want to return home to the only person he knew cared, and every reason to think it was okay to use other people back. Akira had saved him once; Yuuki knew Akira would happily do it again, especially after today.

That was just the kind of person Akira was. He’d put himself on the line to help others, even when doing so put him at risk. Yuuki wanted to tell him not to, but knew Akira wouldn’t listen.

“Well,” Ms. Sakamoto said, and cleared her throat. “Wasn’t this a party? We should be celebrating! Is there cake, Mr. Sakura? I could use a slice right about now.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Sakura, taken aback by the sudden declaration, “sure, sure. Let me just get it out, then. Does anyone else want some?”

Nakanohara declined, saying he didn’t like overly-sweet things like cake. Yuuki was tempted to decline, too, but Sakamoto shoved a plate into his hands before he could say anything.

The party went on. The third-years talked about their college choices and their majors—Nakanohara was the only one who didn’t know much about the other teens in the room aside from Kitagawa—and Yuuki was jostled and elbowed until he gave up his.

The only skillset he had anymore was coding, so he’d gone for several universities dedicated to the sciences, hoping that he’d get accepted into at least one. His parents made more than enough to pay for it now, but if he wanted extra spending money he’d have to get a part-time job.

(That was the one stipulation his father had—get a part-time job, even if he didn’t work every day of the week. College would be hard, but job searching would be cutthroat, and this would give him a foot in the door.)

Everyone nodded at that—Sakamoto mentioned needing one just to make tuition even with his mother helping out, and Kitagawa remarked that online commissions were making him a surprising amount of money—but no one, at least, asked what kind of job he would want.

Yuuki didn’t really know, yet. He’d figure it out in time.

 

* * *

 

He didn’t feel any lighter after the party, despite what his therapist said. The weight of his secret still hung around his shoulders like the world’s heaviest chain, even as Futaba continued to keep him updated about the kidnapping case.

 

Alibaba: turns out they kicked him out of the house

Alibaba: told him to just leave and not come back

Alibaba: then poof, gone, and now theyre worried about how hes doing

 

Yuuki: It sounds like they feel bad about it.

 

Alibaba: too little too late

Alibaba: guy was a high school gymnastics star or somethin

Alibaba: now hes tearing apart a dimension while trying to put it back together again

Alibaba: and you know whats worse

Alibaba: his dad got the app

Alibaba: but deleted it bc he thought it was a bad joke

Alibaba: and then when he tried to contact him after x-day he just freaked when he couldnt

 

Yuuki: So he saw Akira and realized, ‘oh yeah, that’s my son, I have one of those, nothing bad’s going to happen to him’

 

Alibaba: yeah

Alibaba: thats exactly what happened

 

* * *

 

Yuuki whirled through a series of rather heartrending memories he accumulated over the winter break and weeks leading up to his entrance exams. The citizens of Ra Ciela prepared to board a colony ship and the past Akira met the people he’d come to care about the most one last time before its departure. He and Akira watched as the planet crumbled into nothing but space dust just to give the ship enough energy to make the warp jump to a newer, more hospitable planet.

Everything was fine. Everything was okay.

But if that was how it turned out, where was Akira now?

Morgana congratulated them both for uncovering the mystery of Akira’s past. Akira was less than happy about it, citing the strange jumps to other people’s memories, memories Akira shouldn’t have, as proof that it wasn’t over yet.

_“_ _There has to be more to it than that,”_ Akira finished.

Morgana sighed, ears drooping. _“Can’t you just be happy with what you’ve got now?”_

_“_ _Of course I can’t! Something about this is off, and I want to know what!”_

_“_ _Even if it doesn’t make you happy?”_ Morgana warned. _“Even if it turns out all of your efforts were a waste? What then?”_

_“_ _I’ll just have to live with what I’ve done,”_ Akira said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world, _“and become a better person in spite of it all.”_

Morgana huffed. In a flash, he bared his teeth in a snarl, tail a bottlebrush of fur behind him. _“Fine, then! See where it gets you! And—and see if I care, either!”_

He stormed out. Yuuki and Akira stared, wide-eyed in surprise at his behavior. It wasn’t like Morgana at all—the cat-boy usually teased and gave backhanded compliments and the occasional bit of comfort, but he never got angry. He never yelled.

_“_ _Morgana,”_ Akira said, long after the door had slammed shut. _“Are you afraid?”_

There was no answer. Yuuki bid him goodnight—Akira hummed out a quiet acknowledgment—and he closed the app feeling worse than ever before.

Akira was right. Something about this was off, but Yuuki didn’t have the brain power to dedicate to it. Exams were coming up again. He had to study.

But at least he had people to confide in now, even if they were just as clueless about the situation as he was. He had to consider himself lucky for that.

 

* * *

 

 

“ _You know, I’ve been thinking,”_ Akira said the next week, out of the blue, _“and I remembered another recipe. I don’t remember where I learned it from, though. Maybe you could take a look?”_

The crafting sheets were always fairly simple. Yuuki stared at a picture of a robot—it would be nice to walk around with Akira, instead of being confined to his house—and a separate picture of a vacuum tube with a strange-sounding name.

_“_ _I don’t remember what they do,”_ Akira said as he looked them over, _“and I’m wondering whether I should make them or not.”_

**It’s worth a shot.** He’d like to walk around with Akira; Akira could finally show him the Moai heads and the vacuum tubes growing out of the ground like bushes. Yuuki could finally visit Morgana’s trade shop and pester the cat-boy for once.

_“_ _Alright, then! I’ll get started right now!”_

**Make sure to get some sleep.**

_“_ _Yes, sir!”_

 


	5. The Third Year, Part Three

 He and Akira made chocolate for each other for Valentine’s, despite the fact that they couldn’t exchange them. Akira came up with the clever idea to give Yuuki instructions on how to make his, and Yuuki balked at one of the ingredients.

**Are you sure?** He asked. Staring at him on the counter was a nearly-empty bottle of curry powder; he and Akira hadn’t gotten creative enough to experiment with spice combinations yet, mostly because there wasn’t enough room in the cabinets for all of the jars, and if he left them out Yuuki got the feeling his mother would complain.

_“_ _Sure I’m sure!”_ Akira said with a wag of his finger. _“Don’t you believe me, Yuuki?”_

His eyes twinkled. He looked both ready to laugh and pout; Yuuki knew he could do both at the same time.

**I just want to be sure.**

_“_ _It’s good!”_ Akira defended. _“Do you really think I’d share a recipe with you if I didn’t test it out myself first?”_

Yes, Yuuki wanted to send, knowing the usual trope for girlfriends was that they wouldn’t taste a thing before foisting it off on their boyfriends, but he knew Akira was telling him the truth. There was a chart on the wall of Akira’s house—the top half a mess of broken graphics, and the bottom too indistinct to read—that Akira had run one slim finger down before giving him the mystery ingredient.

That, and Akira gushing or complaining about every success or failure he had so far. The fact that he’d tried so many variations before deciding which one was best…

**Well, if you say so.**

He stirred a pinch into the pot anyway.

The chocolate wound up odd, to say the least, but Yuuki found he didn’t mind—not with Akira on the other side of the screen, telling him how tasty the basic recipe Yuuki found online was.

_“_ _Happy Valentine’s Day, Yuuki.”_

**Happy Valentine’s Day,** Akira.

 

* * *

 

 Sakamoto invited him to another party once the semester midterms were over. One last month of intense studying before finals—before they were official graduates, no matter how badly they did.

Akira was invited.

“Gotta make up for how shitty we were when we met him, ya know?” Sakamoto said, and it surprised Yuuki to hear it. He’d thought Sakamoto had forgotten. He’d thought Sakamoto would have called it water under the bridge ages ago.

He brought his charger and a small speaker he could hook up to his phone. Akira wouldn’t be able to converse with anyone but him, but that didn’t mean Akira couldn’t talk out loud and catch someone else’s attention, if only for a little while. He’d probably wonder about what they were eating.

Mr. Sakura showed him a good spot to lean his phone against and let him be; Sakamoto was helping him prep, Kitagawa was in the corner of the kitchen nook stirring a pot, and Futaba was crouched at one of the tables, eyes trained on her laptop.

“Is your mother not coming today, Ryuji?” Kitagawa asked.

“Nah, she’s got work,” was the response. Yuuki moved a display jar of beans and wished he’d thought to pick up a spin-pop or something. “What about that bowl-cut guy?”

“Nakanohara has deigned not to join us,” Kitagawa said, “as we are not only not in his age group, but the conversation put him off last time. I think he still can’t quite believe Mishima’s tale.”

There, perfectly leaned, speaker plugged in. The familiar sounds of the app starting up—except it quickly became clear that Akira was absorbed in his crafting. The robot was coming along nicely and the weird tube was already done, and the wrinkle in his brow meant he’d forgotten the promise he’d made to leave it be for a night. He wasn’t even humming.

_“_ _Just one more piece,”_ Akira mumbled to himself. _“Just one, and I’ll be done. Just one.”_

Yuuki didn’t want to disturb him. He wasn’t the same guy he’d been even a handful of months ago, fervently wishing for anyone’s attention, even if it came through a phone screen. He wasn’t the same guy he’d been last year, either, desperate to control Akira’s life and monopolize his time.

But the bags under Akira’s eyes proved that he hadn’t taken the nap he’d promised Yuuki he would take. The slight shake in his hands meant he hadn’t eaten today, either.

Yuuki tried for a while to get his attention, but Akira was so absorbed he didn’t seem to notice. His eyes tracked from one component to another at a speed that was worrying as his hands plugged in wires and banged at loose connectors with a small hammer, whichever one wasn’t occupied reaching up to tug at his bangs.

“Wow,” Futaba said behind him, “he looks awful.”

“Yeah,” Yuuki agreed. “He gets like this sometimes. Usually he snaps out of it when I call him, so it’s pretty bad this time.”

Akira gave a series of thoughtful noises, closed several sections of the robot’s back Yuuki couldn’t see, and inspected his masterpiece. It really was the biggest, most complex thing Akira had ever made, and Futaba made a squawking noise in his ear as she took in the admittedly impressive and steampunk-ish robot.

_“_ _Yeah, I think it’s done,”_ Akira said, at the same time Futaba crooned, “So cool.”

Then Akira doubled over in pain, clutching his head as if someone were threatening to beat his skull in with a hammer—or their fist, Yuuki thought, remembering Kamoshida.

Then the app crashed. Yuuki caught a glimpse of the error screen— _ciel, earthes, error_ —before the screen went black.

Sakamoto, who was glancing over Futaba’s shoulder at the mention of something cool said, “What the eff was that?”

Yuuki was too numb to notice. The screen remained black for a while—too long, way too long—and he and Futaba gaped at it. She asked, “Does that usually happen?”

“No,” Yuuki said, reaching for his phone. “No, no.” He could turn it off and then back on again—the case was hot, too hot to be good—but surely it was already off? Did he need to let it sit awhile to cool off? “No, no, damn it, damn it, not now, please…!”

Futaba pushed his hands away. “Don’t touch it.”

“But…!”

“Don’t touch it,” she said. “It’s retrying the connection. If you turn it off now who knows what’ll happen?”

Retrying? “Are you sure?”

She shrugged. “Sure I’m sure. It was all right there on that error screen. ‘Genomirai 3 retrying this connection.’ So don’t touch it.”

“I—okay,” he said, and flopped onto a bar stool. He buried his hands under his legs and stared, waiting.

“What happened?” Kitagawa asked. Mr. Sakura peered at them from over the bar, a stack of napkins in his hands.

“Eff if I know,” Sakamoto said. “You said it’s retryin’ something, Futaba?”

“Yeah, it crashed,” Futaba said. “You should’ve seen it—there was this awesome robot—but then Amamiya passed out or something. Then, poof, it crashed.”

“Hope he’s okay,” Sakamoto said.

“What, uh,” Mr. Sakura asked, haltingly, “exactly did this error screen say?”

“Oh, uh, ‘7D connection is broken.’” She paused, bit her lip. “Actually, gimme a pen. Inari’s got a sketchbook around here I can borrow. It’ll be easier if I just write it down.”

“Seventy connections were broken?” Kitagawa asked, stunned, by the pot.

“7-D,” Futaba scowled. “D, as in ‘dimension.' That’s—that’s a dimensional connector; it even said so. That’s why Amamiya can talk to us—uh, to Nishina.”

“Mishima,” Sakamoto corrected. “And—shit—all that stuff about dimensions and time travel and all that junk was true?”

“Gotta be,” Futaba said. Her handwriting was awful; maybe it was because she wasn’t used to holding pens, and not that she wasn’t familiar with writing in English. “I’ve never seen an error screen like that, not even when it’s planned into some 4th wall breaking game. Either this is some seriously elaborate hoax or it’s real.”

Now it was Sakamoto’s turn to scowl. “That’d be some messed up hoax. Using a missing kid like that.”

Yuuki had to agree, if only a little. If all of this turned out to be fake—he didn’t know what he’d do. Akira meant more to him than his own parents did anymore; if what they had wasn’t real, if Akira was just acting the whole time…

Sakamoto and his friends would hate him. Suzui would hate him.

He just wouldn’t be able to live with that.

Futaba and Mr. Sakura puzzled over the error screen she’d drawn up—she’d gotten way more than a glance, it seemed. Sakamoto sat by Yuuki as he waited for the phone to start back up.

“You sure know how to ruin a party,” Sakamoto grumbled.

Yuuki winced. “Sorry.”

“It’s—” he sighed. “It’s not your fault. He’s your boyfriend, and I thought he’d like bein’ a part of somethin’, y’know, normal.”

He paused; Yuuki took the chance to say what he wasn’t. “But we came here to celebrate and now I’ve got the mood down. I—I shouldn’t’ve—shouldn’t have—”

What? Thought that Akira would enjoy being included, even if he didn’t know what was going on? Thought that Akira wouldn’t stay up all night and all day to finish the stupid robot to make him happy? Thought that now that the others knew, he could talk to Akira with them around?

“You couldn’t have known this was going to happen,” Kitagawa said. He’d moved closer; the pot was off the burner. “None of us could have known. It’s possible that this would have happened whether you had Akira wait or not. I believe it’s better that it happened now rather than later, as we are here with you. Imagine if Futaba hadn’t stopped you, and you lost all contact with Akira altogether.”

“Y-yeah,” Sakamoto said. “Sorry ‘bout that, Mishima.”

His phone screen lightened. Less off-black and more looking-at-a-black-web-page-black. Gradually, in increments, Akira and his house and the damn robot reappeared. Akira was leaning on it heavily, fingers digging into his skull as a high whine left his throat.

There were no prompts. Akira didn’t seem to notice him. He still touched a nervous finger to Akira’s temple—a sudden gasp and a flinch sent the metal hand into Akira’s hair instead.

_“_ _Oh,”_ Akira said, breathless. _“It’s you, Yuuki. Sorry—I’m sure it’ll go away soon.”_

That slight shake in his voice—the weakness hidden behind it all—the way it sounded as if it were a thread about to snap made him remember Suzui. Her voice had sounded like that when therapy got to be too much—and the pain that she’d been hiding then was immense all on its own. He could see her body, limp as a rag doll on the ground of Shujin’s courtyard, eyes unfocused as the paramedics hauled her away.

Akira misinterpreted the images. _“No, no, I’ll be fine, really. It’s going away already; it just caught me by surprise, that’s all. Could you give me a minute?”_

Akira was… not quite okay. But he was there. The connection had been reestablished, and Yuuki thanked every god he could think of for that.

He leaned back with a sigh, forgetting he was sitting on a bar stool and not in a chair. Sakamoto caught him and hauled him upright when he nearly fell; Kitagawa pointed at a corner of the screen and asked, “Mishima, what is that?”

The monitor still moved. Yuuki swiveled it around in growing horror; almost all of Akira’s house was gone. Lines of code scrolled or blinked by, and the only indication that Yuuki got as to it still being Akira’s house were faint lines where one wall met another or the ceiling or floor. Akira’s bed was a mish-mash of code and texture that hurt to look at; Akira’s kitchen fared no better.

Yuuki wondered if the card spots were okay. Akira had gone swimming in a pool, eaten chocolate at the Valentine’s cafe, examined a present under a Christmas tree with a wistful expression on his face. Yuuki didn’t want him to lose those places, too.

“Shit,” Sakamoto said behind him.

A prompt popped up. **Your house…**

_“_ _Is it that bad?”_

**You still can’t tell?**

_“_ _No, I can’t,”_ Akira huffed. He slumped down to the floor; Yuuki could only see the top of his hair. _“I hate this. Something is—wrong, here, but I can’t see it. I can’t do anything about it. All I can do is build this stupid robot. All I can do is watch as one thing after another happens to me and I can’t do anything about it!”_

**We’ll get through this. Together.**

_“_ _Yeah,”_ Akira sniffed. _“Together. You’re always here for me. You’re—you’re all I’ve got. I—I remembered something just now, Yuuki. They kicked me out. They didn’t want me in their house anymore, in their lives anymore, all because of some bogus charge. They kicked me out. They kicked me out in the middle of the night. Where was I supposed to go? Who’d want a delinquent kid crashing at their place even for a night?”_

He was crying. Yuuki could hear him—the whole cafe could hear him—and Yuuki pressed the hand to the top of Akira’s head. He would never turn Akira out for anything. Akira would always have a place beside him. Akira didn’t have to worry, because Yuuki would never leave.

“The Amamiyas never mentioned that,” Kitagawa said with a frown.

“I guess that explains part of the footage,” Futaba said. “When he disappears he’s got this huge bag on his back and he reaches for his nose or something. That’s the part I could never figure out, but I think he might’ve been crying.”

“What kind of shit parents toss their kid out after dark?” Sakamoto yelled. He was furious; Kitagawa was furious, too, and when Yuuki looked over at Futaba and Mr. Sakura both were glowering at Yuuki’s phone, the error message sitting between them forgotten.

Mr. Sakura put a hand on Futaba’s shoulder. “Don’t do it.”

“Why not?” she asked. “They deserve it. They lied to everybody, not just me. Look at him, Sojiro. That’s what his own parents did to him.”

“We don’t know everything about this yet,” Mr. Sakura said, “so don’t jump the gun and do something outrageous. Please, Futaba.”

“They were talkin’ to ya?” Sakamoto asked.

“I was giving them info as Alibaba,” Futaba grumbled. “Stuff like, ‘Ren’s safe, don’t worry,’ and ‘I’m looking into it.’ They seemed grateful. Now I dunno.”

“And the police can’t trace you?” Kitagawa asked. “It sounds like they might have thought you were the kidnapper yourself.”

Futaba puffed out her chest. “Who do you think I am? I am the original Medjed, you know. Nobody can trace me! But rest assured: I am going to be blowing up their phones at all hours of the night about this for a month. Just you wait and see; I bet not even Ms. Akechi will want to be associated with them then.”

“Futaba,” Mr. Sakura chided.

“What? It’s not as bad as what I _wanna_ do.”

Mr. Sakura gave a deep, bone-weary sigh. “They’re obviously remorseful about it. Sometimes parents do things out of anger or stress. Stuff they don’t mean to say or do comes out. This sounds like that. Let me talk to them first, okay? And if it turns out they don’t want him back…”

“Then I can doxx them?”

“Then I’ll take him in myself,” Mr. Sakura finished. “And don’t sound so hopeful when you say that.”

Futaba clicked her tongue. Sakamoto clicked his tongue, too. Kitagawa looked ready to march across Japan to give the Amamiyas a tongue-lashing all by himself.

_I’m—no, we’re—here for you, Akira,_ Yuuki tried to get across. _You aren’t alone anymore._

Akira got the message loud and clear. _“You’re right,”_ he said. _“I’m not alone anymore, am I?”_ He sniffed some more; Yuuki moved the hand across his head in a way he hoped felt nice. _“I’ve got you, Yuuki. And your friends, even if I didn’t like them at first. And my friends are here, too. They’re here somewhere. They’ve got to be. When we find each other, we’ll all work together to fix all of this. I—I have to believe that. I have to.”_

He got up, slowly. At some point he’d grabbed onto the metal hand and was reaching for the monitor. _“I know this doesn’t work both ways,”_ he said, palm flat on the screen, _“but no words can express how grateful I am that you’re still here with me. Nothing can. Not ever.”_

Yuuki tapped the palm. It would almost be like they were holding hands, if Akira didn’t mind how inorganic the one was.

Akira’s eyes blazed with a renewed fire. _“One day I’ll make it home to you. I promise. It could be next week, it could be next year—it could be ten or twenty or thirty years from now. But I’ll do it. You’ll see. There’s only a little more, Yuuki. Can you stay by my side until the end?”_

And past that. Far past that. He’d never sell this phone no matter how old it got until Akira was home, safe and sound.

Never.

**I swear.**

 

* * *

 

Life after that was a blur of notes and tests and study groups at Leblanc and Akira’s increasingly worrying memories. Arsene had led a group down to the surface of the new planet to make sure it was hospitable, and Goro…

Goro had hatched a plan to get him and Akira home, one that involved being as cold-hearted and ruthless as possible. Goro wanted to use all of the people on the colony ship as an energy source to fuel their way back across dimensions.

Akira wasn’t having any of that. Akira said it was needlessly cruel; asked how genocide could make anyone happy, said that he wouldn’t go back if it meant throwing away the lives of others.

_“_ _Who cares about them?”_ Goro had snarled. _“Who cares what they feel? They didn’t care one lick about me; why should I do the same?”_

(It was the same thing he had always said. He didn’t care who he hurt, who he had to use, who he had to betray if it meant he returned home. Yuuki thought, more than once, that anyone else in his position would be doing the same thing—even Akira.

But it didn’t excuse that.)

The whole universe there had a weird mechanic Yuuki was still struggling to wrap his mind around—they thought of their minds as machines, almost, capable of linking with the spirits of the planet and each other at a level that Yuuki only heard of in bad sci-fi games. It was the reason normal humans could interact with the Cielnotrons or craft miraculous magic that saved whole towns.

Goro, still stuck in the server tank, couldn’t physically talk to Akira. So he’d gotten Akira to link their minds together—and once it was clear Akira wasn’t going to partner with him in his latest suicide rush to return home…

Yuuki watched in horror, gut twisting, stomach sinking like a lead weight, as Goro ripped Akira’s mind apart from the inside out. Watched as Akira begged and pleaded for anyone to come and help him, save him, _please_ …

Watched as Renaflask was the only one to answer his call.

Watched as Akira transferred over the emperor’s divine rights.

Watched as he disappeared.

Akira was quiet when that particular memory was done. Yuuki didn’t dare disturb him; Futaba would have a field day with all of this sci-fi stuff, but the genre had never been Yuuki’s forte. He couldn’t piece all of this together no matter how hard he tried.

_“_ _This must be my mind, then,”_ Akira said. _“Or a part of it, I think. Maybe it was protecting me from whatever Goro was trying to do, and now that I’m regaining all of my memories, there’ll soon be no need for it. That might explain why it looks so broken to you… Or maybe not,”_ he laughed a bit. _“I’ll admit I’m no expert. Maybe Morgana’s the guardian here? And I’ll have to fight him to leave and regain my rightful body; or maybe once I leave and don’t need this place anymore, he’ll just disappear. Maybe that’s why he got so mad when we wanted to keep going?”_

He was laughing, but there was no glimmer in his eye. Yuuki didn’t even point out that this was yet another kiss with another man; would Akira make the same excuse as last time, or would he try to brush it off?

**Should you really joke about this?**

_“_ _I’m getting sick of crying all the time. All of this is awful, sure, but there’s nothing I can do to change that. All I can do is sit here and depend on you to help me.”_

Something like guilt was eating away at his stomach. Akira went on—something something believe in himself, something something believe in his friends, something something find his body. Yuuki thought that he liked it better when Akira cried. Then it didn’t look as if he was trying to keep himself together just to fall to pieces as soon as Yuuki’s back was turned.

Watching him like that made Yuuki want to scream. What about being honest with each other? What about showing each other everything?

Or was that different when they could barely communicate? Was he the only one fretting over this, or was Akira trying to help him by putting on a brave face?

( _No_ , he told himself. That was his nerves talking for him. Akira might really be tired of crying; hadn’t Yuuki himself gotten tired of being in near-constant pain back on the volleyball team, so much so that he barely felt any new bruises or bumps as they appeared?)

He took a deep breath. Akira was staring at the screen with a worried look on his face that told Yuuki he’d been waiting for a while.

Akira was strong. Past-Akira and Ren Amamiya were strong, strong enough to stand up for their beliefs even when the world ran them down for it and left them in a ditch by the roadside.

**Let’s keep going.**

And they did.

The days gradually became warmer. Akira’s memories—all the little bits that they’d questioned before, all the pieces of information that they’d never gotten—started to fall into place. The people of Ra Ciela were as greedy as the people of Japan, willingly using every person they could to make their own lives better. That Yuuki’s app was sent out into space dimensions away on the off chance that anyone would offer to help in a way that didn’t involve making everything worse, well.

Yuuki had a good laugh at that. Futaba had run the numbers on the app, and while he had kept going, the million or so others had not.

(There were still others who, for one reason or another, couldn’t access the app yet. Kitagawa had shown them his new smartphone, complete with an app that looked almost exactly like Yuuki’s but showed an error screen whenever he tried to start it up. Futaba had itched to take it apart and had only backed down when they mentioned not knowing if she would break the connection completely.)

It was a nice feeling, to know he was the only one who cared enough about a broken boy to try and fix him. It was a selfish feeling, too—he couldn’t expect to keep going like this. Eventually their happy days together would end, Yuuki would graduate and lose his vast amounts of free time, and Akira would go back to being lonely, wishing for Yuuki to return so they could chat like they used to. The thought made guilt sink into his stomach; would it wind up being like his junior year all over again, where he’d watched everyone leave him, except Akira would lose the only person who cared?

That would hurt Akira far more than it had hurt Yuuki. Yuuki had had Akira to cling to—Akira didn’t have anyone except Morgana, who had taken to sulking in his shop and refused to come out as they made their way through the last set of memories.

Yuuki had more than enough sharls saved up to unlock everything. Whenever he got tired of studying, he’d lie down in bed with his earbuds in and watch memories. He and Akira would go through one or two at a time and chat about it for a bit before Yuuki fell asleep still in his uniform. No one at school seemed to care about the wrinkles in his shirt or the bad case of bedhead he wandered into class with—no one called him out on it, and all of the teachers had end-of-the-year burnout and enough actual problem students that they never called him out on it, either.

Mr. Sakura did, though. If Kitagawa was in the cafe, he would, too, while Futaba or Sakamoto would snicker at his appearance and start ribbing.

(He could actually think of it as ribbing now. His therapist told him it was a step forward; some tiny part of him tried to tell him they meant every word, but he had years of experience with the sneers that came with actual, spiteful teasing. These smiles were genuine, he thought.)

One day, while Akira busied himself making another plush doll of Arsene, and while Yuuki was busy dodging Sakamoto and Futaba’s joint elbow-to-the-ribs attack as Kitagawa sipped at his cup of coffee and discussed the news with Mr. Sakura, Leblanc’s door jingled open.

Mr. Sakura turned to greet his customers and froze. Yuuki caught a glimpse of honey-brown hair and froze, too, Sakamoto’s elbow finally meeting its mark. The only sound in the room was Akira, still humming away at his project.

Ms. Akechi stood in the doorway, her hands clasped around her middle and her purse dangling from the crook of her arm. She gave them a nervous smile but said nothing as she moved out of the way, revealing two equally dark heads, one curlier than the other.

“I hope it’s alright, but,” Ms. Akechi said, clearly wishing she wasn’t the one who had to speak up first, “I had to discuss the situation with someone, and, well, since these two are the only other ones who could understand—I mean, since their boy is in the same predicament—I only thought they should know.”

“Ms. Akechi has told us everything she knows,” said the man. Mr. Amamiya, Yuuki guessed. He had Akira’s hair and jawline, but his eyes were black and dull with too many sleepless nights. “We had to think on it for a long time, but in the end we couldn’t decide whether if it was the truth or not, and we asked her to bring us here.”

“One of you can talk to our boy?” asked the woman. She had Akira’s straight nose and his gray eyes, but these ones, too, didn’t dance the way Akira’s did. She took a step forward, pleading, “Please, if you can—please, we just want to—”

“You kicked him outta your house,” Sakamoto said, with a glare. “And now you wanna act like you’re sorry?”

Mrs. Amamiya took a step back out of shock. Sakamoto was dialing up the delinquent angle and she couldn’t handle it. “I—I just—I only wanted some space to think, that’s all. I—I didn’t mean to yell at him. I told myself I’d call him in the morning and apologize and tell him he could come home but he didn’t—he never—we thought he was safe somewhere and just angry at us—”

Her face crumpled. Her husband produced a handkerchief which she buried her face in; Ms. Akechi, after some deliberation and a reassuring nod from Mr. Amamiya, began rubbing soothing circles into her back.

“It was a bad time for all of us,” Mr. Amamiya explained. “His arrest, the one-sided trial, all of it just seemed to be stacked against us. Ren wasn’t the kind of kid who hurt people because he could; he lost friends standing up to bullies and was bullied himself, so he knew what he was doing when he attempted to intervene. He saw something wrong and he tried to fix it.”

He sighed. “But that’s not what the court was told or led to believe. We couldn’t even testify as to his character; we couldn’t do anything for him. And because of his house arrest, he was always at home. Even his school didn’t want anything to do with him anymore.”

_“_ _There, done!”_ chirped Akira from Yuuki’s phone. The speaker made sure that the whole cafe could hear him. _“I think it’s even better than the last one, Yuuki! Remember how I couldn’t get his wings right? They look pretty good this time!”_

Sakamoto let him go; the thin film of sweat that had accumulated on his neck made him shiver in the silent, shocked looks that the Amamiyas were giving him. Futaba peered over his shoulder as he picked up his phone—speaker and all—and said, “Wow, that is really good! Is he really an amateur with this kinda stuff?”

“He’s gotten a lot of practice,” Yuuki said, at the same time clicking **You’ve gotten a lot better!**

Akira grinned at him. Mrs. Amamiya stumbled over, eyes wide and searching—Yuuki didn’t want to show her Akira as he was in his mind-space, so much worse for wear than after a single wrongful conviction, and especially surrounded by a bunch of scrolling screens of code; he clutched his phone tighter, to protect Akira, even as Akira said, _“Oh, that’s right. You said you were meeting up with your friends today. I’m not interrupting, am I?”_

**No, of course not.**

_“_ _Oh, that’s good,”_ Akira said. _“Now, should I make something else next, or…?”_

“Ren,” Mrs. Amamiya said.

“He can’t hear you,” Yuuki said. “It’s pretty weird. If—if you came here to bother him, I…”

“No, no,” she said, even as Akira began talking to himself about past failures he could improve upon, “nothing of the sort. I—I mean, my husband and me—we just want to see him. To know he’s okay, that he’s being taken care of.”

Sakamoto scoffed. “So you don’t gotta feel guilty about kicking him out, huh?”

“Sometimes I wonder if he’d be alright if I hadn’t. Sometimes I wonder if someone else would have gone missing instead, as if to take his place—and sometimes I wonder if it was better for him to disappear, rather than have to live here with that awful stigma hanging around his neck like—like a noose. But if he’s happy and alive I’ll be okay with that. If he has friends who love him I’ll understand. I just—I just want to—”

Mrs. Amamiya grew more distraught the longer she went on, until she was hiccuping and sobbing into her husband’s handkerchief all over again; this time Mr. Amamiya was the one to draw circles into her back. He held her close and let her cry into his shoulder.

(After particularly bad memories Yuuki would dream he could reach through his phone and give Akira the tightest hug he was physically capable of. He would go to sleep with these thoughts in his head and wake up the next morning clutching at his sheets so tightly his fingers had fallen asleep and cramped when he tried to move them. It wasn’t fair that the woman who’d caused Akira so much trouble here could be comforted so while Akira was forced to go without.)

“We just want to see him, that’s all,” Mr. Amamiya said. “Just for few minutes and then we’ll be on our way. Ms. Akechi has agreed to call off the search for her son if we do the same; I’m afraid we bullied her a bit to get her to bring us here. We’ve been doing an awful lot of things parents shouldn’t be doing, and we’ve done a fair bit of those to Ren—we just want to know that wherever he is and whoever he’s with, he’s being treated well.”

Yuuki ran his thumbnail under the speaker cup; Akira’s rambling cut off mid-sentence. He needed the quiet to think for a bit—should he tell the Amamiyas everything that had gone on with Akira, or not? Should he tell them how their son had died twice, now? Or that he’d been forced into one experiment after another after his arrival in the other dimension? That he’d been scared for his life more times than Yuuki cared to count?

That he’d worked his way through it all and came out the other end still kind and caring and compassionate? That he’d worked hard to save the very same people that had kidnapped him? That he had taken in a weak, pitiful spirit and turned it into something strong?

Should Yuuki tell them that Akira cried and cried until he couldn’t anymore? That he laughed until his stomach hurt? That he’d smiled and grieved for people he didn’t even know?

They probably knew half of that by now. They were Akira’s parents. They knew far more about him than Yuuki ever could.

“Mishima,” someone said, “are you alright?”

Akira’s parents were standing right in front of him. They wanted to see Akira. They probably wanted to apologize.

(Yuuki’s parents had barely apologized for ignoring him. Yuuki’s parents were barely around in the first place anymore, as if association with Kamoshida’s favorite punching bag made them inferior somehow. Hirotaka Mishima had never expanded on what he’d said over long-ago stir-fry, and Yuuki didn’t expect him to. Yuuki’s mother, well… Yuuki couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her. No one in the Mishima household even dared to approach the Kamoshida incident with a ten-foot pole.)

Yuuki swiped his sleeve over his face, smearing tears and snot. Someone passed him napkins, which he scrubbed at his face with until he was sure the skin was angry and raw.

Akira’s parents cared. His own didn’t; jealousy screamed in his veins and pulsed in his skull, as if envy were the only reason he was alive.

But that was no reason not to let Akira see them.

“I’ll ask him if he doesn’t mind,” he said, searching his pockets for his earbuds. “But if he does you have to live with that.”

“Fair enough,” Mr. Amamiya said with a nod.

_“_ _—and I wonder if I can make—oh, Yuuki,”_ Akira said. Not for the first time, Yuuki wished he could run his hands through Akira’s hair. It just looked so soft. _“Did you need something?”_ He frowned. _“Is something the matter? Are your friends bothering you?”_

It was all Yuuki could do to get the image of Akira’s parents, holding onto each other in the middle of Leblanc like they were about to be swept away to sea, across to him. Akira’s frown deepened even as Yuuki tried to get across the idea that they wanted to see him.

_“_ _Mom and Dad, huh,”_ Akira said, contemplative. _“I don’t know, really. You say they’re pretty sorry about it all, but something like that doesn’t just go away. Mom, she kicked me out, knowing I didn’t have anywhere else to go. And Dad, he just kind of sat there, looking disappointed, trying to calm her down in these little pathetic displays, like he was scared of how she was acting. Then he looked at me and—”_

He broke off with a stifled sob. Yuuki gave him a few moments to collect himself, aware of every eye in the cafe trained on him, even if they were trying to be discreet about it.

_“_ _It was like he didn’t even recognize me anymore. Told me to pack some things and call when I found someplace to stay—said if I couldn’t he’d find somewhere that would take me in for a couple of days, just long enough for Mom to calm down. So we could think about it all rationally. It was like he didn’t care that I was scared, too. It was like neither of them cared how I was feeling.”_

Yuuki backed up until he hit the wall next to the last booth, dimly hearing the thunk of his head hitting the wood. Mr. Sakura was running a hand across Futaba’s back, giving her the chance to break off if she felt the need to, and both of them were staring. Kitagawa had taken to his sketchbook, but his pencil moved lazily, thoughtlessly. Sakamoto and Ms. Akechi wore identical looks of discomfort, though Sakamoto flitted toward anger the longer the conversation went on.

_Do you want me to tell them?_ Yuuki tried to convey. He imagined telling the Amamiyas that one of the last memories their son had of them was the one where he was kicked out of his own house and onto the streets regardless of how lost and alone it made him feel; he imagined telling them Akira was far better off without them to hurt him anymore.

Akira took another few moments to answer. _“No, I,”_ he started, then sniffled as he regained his composure, _“I should do it. I should talk to them, even if they can’t talk to me. Even if what I have to say upsets them. Even if they hate me for it.”_

_So brave,_ Yuuki thought.

_“_ _Maybe it’s not fair that I won’t be able to hear their side of it,”_ Akira said, _“but it doesn’t feel like they’ve ever given much thought to my side of things, either. I can’t be sure of that, but that’s what it feels like. If—if they’ll listen, if they’re really willing to listen, I’ll talk to them. Just—just let me change first. I should wear something clean for this.”_

Yuuki nodded as Akira wandered off screen. “He wants to talk to you,” he told the Amamiyas, “but it’ll be a few minutes.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Mr. Amamiya. “Hear that, dear? We can talk to Ren soon.”

Yuuki shook his head. “It’s one-way only, from his end. Believe me, I wish I could talk to him properly.”

Futaba gave a weird snort that could have been the start of a laugh. Kitagawa nodded, though to what Yuuki didn’t know, and Sakamoto and Mr. Sakura were wearing matching knowing grins.

Yuuki had an idea as to what was going through their minds and felt his face heat up.

“Well,” Mr. Amamiya said, seemingly oblivious to the looks directed at Yuuki, “we’ll just have to listen carefully, won’t we? This might be the first time in a long time we’ve never had to worry over what to say.”

He sighed. Mrs. Amamiya wasn’t crying anymore, but he still worked at her back. “Remember that time Ren was in sixth grade,” he said, “and he sprained his ankle jumping off a fence to stop those kids terrorizing that stray cat? When he came home he said—”

“‘I want to join the gymnastics team,’” Mrs. Amamiya helped him finish. “Because it would make him flexible enough that he wouldn’t get hurt, he thought. We had to tell him there was a difference between being flexible and being reckless.”

“And he still wanted to do it.” Her husband laughed. She laughed. “What about you, Ms. Akechi? Any stories from Goro’s childhood?”

Ms. Akechi held herself, rubbing at her arms as if fighting off a chill. Leblanc was warm despite the cool spring air outside; the pile of coats in the booth nest to Yuuki a testament to that. “Goro, he wanted,” she said, quietly, “he wanted to be a hero. A superhero or a detective or a cop—someone who helped people, who made their lives a little better when things got bleak. I think—I think he and Ren might have gotten along well, if they’d met here.”

She looked at Yuuki with sorrow and pity swimming in her eyes, as if knowing what he and Akira had discovered. As if she knew all along that Goro would never— _could_ never—be the hero he wanted to be, that he was destined to be some tragic villain for the rest of time.

It was certainly starting to look that way.

“It sounds like it,” Mr. Amamiya said.

_“_ _Okay, Yuuki,”_ said Akira. _“I’m ready.”_

He’d changed into the long-sleeved shirt and jeans Yuuki knew weren’t from Ra Ciela. From here, then, obviously; the clothes must have been the ones he was wearing when he was kidnapped—when his parents kicked him out. They’d recognize them. They’d have to.

“He’s done,” Yuuki said, pulling the earbuds out.

“Why don’t you have that chat upstairs?” Mr. Sakura offered. “Should be warm up there, and you’ll have a bit of privacy. Right, Futaba?”

“Uh,” Futaba squeaked, “right. Yeah. Totally.”

Mr. Amamiya took Yuuki’s phone and the coiled earbuds and led his wife up the stairs to the cafe’s attic. As soon as Mrs. Amamiya’s heels had vanished from sight, a collective sigh went across the cafe proper.

Yuuki’s hands felt empty without his phone in them. He could still feel the weight of it—his fingers curled, naturally, as if in sheer disbelief that he’d let it go.

“Ren!” Mrs. Amamiya shouted. She sounded halfway to another crying fit. “Oh, Ren! My baby boy!”

Mr. Amamiya said something soothing to her, in a low tone that didn’t carry down the stairs.

Yuuki moved away anyway. Akira wanted privacy; the least he could do was not listen in on the other side of the conversation. Kitagawa stopped him before he moved too far, however, a worried slant to his brow. “Mishima,” he said softly, and pressed another handful of napkins into Yuuki’s hands.

His face tickled. He scratched at his cheek and felt the wetness there; he was crying again.

Again. Like a baby—like some coddled child throwing a tantrum over not getting any ice cream, although Yuuki’s tears were quiet and slipped out of his eyes like rain from a cloud, as if it were natural.

Natural, ha. Boys didn’t cry. Boys were supposed to be strong. Boys weren’t supposed to show weakness. Boys weren’t supposed to wish their parents paid attention to them, weren’t supposed to wish they’d come home for dinner more than once a week, weren’t supposed to hope and pray that something they did was worth praise of any kind.

When was the last time Yuuki was praised by someone other than his therapist?

(Futaba had looked over the code for another app-extension the week before and said, “Not bad, for an NPC.” Sakamoto had told him his grades were miles better than Sakamoto’s own. Kitagawa had snapped at him not to move a few days ago—he’d been smiling down at his phone, at Akira, and the expression had given the artist very sudden inspiration.)

By someone older than he was?

(Ms. Kawakami had called him into the guidance office. “What a waste,” she called his professed career path, patting his latest essay. “You’d do way better with this, you know! Think about it a little more, please?”

Mr. Sakura, glancing over from where he was stirring the curry pot with that smirk on his face, “You know, I’ve been thinking of hiring a part-timer lately. Know anyone who’d be interested?”)

Kitagawa ushered him into a booth, where Yuuki collapsed over the table like a house of cards, wet napkins pressed so hard to his eyes he saw stars. Sobs threatened to rise out of him; he grit his teeth against each one until his jaw ached and his throat burned. “Mishima,” Kitagawa said again.

“Yuuki, man,” Sakamoto said, sounding far less distant than Yuuki wanted him to be, “we’re here for you. You know that, right?”

Yuuki. And from Sakamoto’s own mouth—that had to mean something, right? The fact that he’d never called Yuuki that before—Yuuki had liked to think it was residual embarrassment from what he had done to keep Sakamoto from taking his phone, but he hadn’t been sure. He had thought, on more than one occasion, that he just wasn’t worth being Sakamoto’s friend—friends didn’t do those kinds of things to each other, Sakamoto had clearly become uncomfortable, and the shame of it had burned low in Yuuki’s gut that entire week.

He’d thought of rooftops far too often that week, in between scrubbing the floors and the tub and the walls. His parents had hardly noticed any kind of change.

But, still—now he was Yuuki? “Why?” he asked, though his voice shuddered.

“Well, we’re friends, yeah? Ain’t that what friends do?”

“No,” Yuuki grit out. “My—my name. Why—why change it now?”

“‘Cause I don’t think you’d believe me if I said, ‘Mishima, we’re friends. We’re here for you.’ Right?”

Kitagawa hummed. “You’re the only one we still refer to by last name. It likely does seem strange, once you think about it. This is just a—a natural course of action, isn’t it?”

“But—But I—”

“For heaven’s sake, kid,” Mr. Sakura said, “just accept it.”

He shook his head. He didn’t want to be Yuuki to anyone but Akira—but then again, the only other choice he had was to be called ‘Mr. Monitor,’ and Yuuki hadn’t liked that idea at all. Akira had laughed when he’d vetoed it with every fiber of his being the prompts would allow.

(Would Akira tell him to accept this, too?)

Or—maybe it was because the only other people to call him Yuuki were his parents. He hadn’t heard his first name for a long time before Akira had shown up in his life, either. Kamoshida had certainly never used it; he didn’t think he would be able to stand it if the bastard had.

“I,” he said, wiping his face on the soggy mass of napkins, “I just—”

He broke off. Somehow admitting it was too hard—but over the line of napkins he could see the goth-doctor staring in through Leblanc’s window, one dyed eyebrow raised, hands casually resting in her pockets. She wasn’t wearing her lab coat, so she nearly blended in with the street outside.

It was just the blur of tears in his eyes, he was sure—but he had a sudden recollection of a session with his therapist. He had to meet honesty with honesty if he wanted true friendships with others. He had to help others understand himself.

“I’m just not used to it,” Yuuki forced out in a rush of breath. “Being called by my name—or having people who want to.”

“Well you’re just going to have to get used to it,” Futaba said, “‘cause we aren’t gonna stop.”

He laughed wetly. “Okay.”

“And you gotta call us by our names, too,” Sakamoto added. “S’only fair, right?”

“Okay.”

“But is that what you were upset about?” Kitagawa—Yusuke, _Yusuke_ —asked as the goth-doctor smiled and strolled away.

Yuuki’s weak smile faded. “No, that—that was something else,” he said. He took a deep breath, then a few more, and miraculously no one spoke while he was gathering his courage. “I just thought that, if what happened to Akira, happened to me, would my parents even notice? They, you know, they hardly seemed to care about what happened with Kamoshida. Mom, she tried to—tried to blame me for the bru-bruises on my arms. Said they meant that I—that I was i-in a gang, or doing drugs. I-it couldn’t have b-been Kamoshida for her. Shujin was a good school—and—it couldn’t be anything else.”

Shit, he’d started crying again. Crybaby Mishima, who teared up when Kamoshida punted balls at his face, who flinched whenever Kamoshida so much as raised a hand. He could feel the phantom pricks of his mother’s nails in his arm—well-manicured, painted a deep red to offset her eyes—and rubbed at the spot.

Someone pressed more napkins—no, a towel—into his hands and took the mess of napkins away. “I just started thinking whether they’d leave their jobs to do the same things the Amamiyas have,” he said. “I just wondered if they’d regret not doing one thing or another sooner. I—” he shuddered to admit, “I thought so much that Suzui was brave to try and end it all. If I hadn’t had Akira, I would have. I would have done it, too. And I—I just thought, that they wouldn’t have even noticed. That’s all.”

He laughed. His heart wasn’t light; his eyelids were heavy. Hirotaka had been trying, at least, hesitantly asking after his hobbies or his friends at dinner. Saying he’d support Yuuki no matter where he decided to go to school or for what, Kamoshida the elephant in the room always in the corners of their eyes but undiscussed. His father might do it, might go to the lengths the Amamiyas had.

But his mother? He didn’t think so.

“Everyone is different,” Ms. Akechi said, very softly. She’d been quiet for so long that he’d nearly forgotten she was there. She was hugging herself and staring at the floor with a very distant look in her eyes. “People lie, or they change their minds. Someone you might have known to be kind and caring might turn out to be the scum of the earth—and I’m afraid I don’t have much experience with the reverse. Once people know one single bad thing about you, that’s it. That’s all they need to know.

“I miss my little boy,” she said, just a hair’s breadth above a whisper, “but I’m almost glad he’s not here. Could I have handled raising him to be a good person, when everyone else would treat him like trash on the side of the road, just because he has no father? Just because I’m not married? I don’t think I could have. I don’t think I could have handled it at all.

“But there’s one thing I do know: they’d notice, Mishima. They’d notice, and they’d hate themselves everyday for the rest of their lives.”

Everyone stared at her. Eventually, Futaba broke the silence. “Whoa,” her voice creaked, “talk about a bombshell. Don’t tell me this is Leblanc Therapy Hour or something.”

“I sure hope not,” Mr. Sakura replied. “I run a cafe, not a clinic.”

But he was smiling—at Yuuki, at Ms. Akechi—even if it did seem strained around the edges. Joking with Futaba just to lighten the mood.

“S-sorry,” Yuuki said.

“Don’t be,” Ryuji said. He was staring at the floor, too, with a scowl on his face. “These kinda things gotta come out sooner or later. I don’t think my dad would give a shit. Mom would, though. Akira’s lucky—he’s got both of his folks waiting for him to come home.”

“And Yuuki,” Yusuke added. “And us.”

“Yeah, and us,” Ryuji added.

Yuuki let his eyes slip closed, heedless to the murmurings going on around him. His eyes felt sticky, as if they didn’t want to open ever again, and his nose was stuffed up with snot. His throat still burned and his hands ached. “I’m gonna go wash my face,” he said, and staggered his way over to the restroom. He’d only been crying but his head swam and his nerves were afire, and only when he was safely behind the restroom door did he take in a sharp breath.

God, he’d—he’d admitted to thinking about committing suicide. About throwing himself off a rooftop far higher than Shujin’s—about how Akira was the only reason he didn’t.

_Pathetic_ , he thought, but no one had laughed at him for it. Could they have known? Could they have guessed?

The floorboards in the attic creaked. He let the water in the sink run for a few seconds before realizing he needed to pee and scrambled for his fly with wet hands.

_Pathetic_ , he thought, but would they expect anything else?

_Stop it._ He flushed. He washed his hands, his face, pressed cool fingers to his neck and gripped at his hair. His pants were only a bit damp. If anyone had any tact they wouldn’t mention it.

None of it. None of it at all.

The Amamiyas were down in the cafe when he emerged, Yuuki’s phone waiting on the table where everyone’s coats were still piled, earbuds coiled around it. The app was still running though Akira was nowhere to be seen; Futaba was plugging in his spare charger under the table.

“I can get you some coffee to go,” Mr. Sakura was saying to them.

Mr. Amamiya just shook his head. “My wife can’t have caffeine,” he said simply, “and I’ve lost the taste for it myself. It’s a shame; Ms. Akechi raved about your blend so much it almost made us want to try it, even though she said she only got a sip.”

Mr. Sakura huffed a laugh. “Is that so? I’ve got some decaf beans…”

“I feel we’ve intruded enough,” Mrs. Amamiya said. “Bothering you during your business hours, I mean. But, if you have decaf, well,” she smiled a bit, “maybe next time.”

“Next time, then,” Mr. Sakura agreed.

Then she turned to Yuuki. There was something in her eyes that made him wary—something steely and wary all in one go—but she stepped close to him and enveloped him in a hug.

He gaped, and got a mouthful of hair.

“Take care of my son, please,” she whispered to him, and then let him go.

Mr. Amamiya did the same, albeit with a firm handshake and the slightest of nods. “He trusts you,” he added, “so please, don’t let him down.”

“I—I won’t,” Yuuki said, wondering what in the world Akira had told them.

Then the three of them—the Amamiyas and Ms. Akechi, looking a bit ashamed of her outburst—left, the bell above the door ringing in Yuuki’s ears long after they were gone.

“Shit,” Ryuji said, as he slumped into a chair.

There really weren’t any other words for it.

 


	6. The Third Year, Part Four

 

Akira was out the rest of the evening, though Yuuki—and his friends, they’d always been his friends, even when he treated them like shit, apparently—consistently checked for him. Maybe his talk with his parents had him rattled, maybe he told them something he was regretting now, long after they’d gone and he’d lost his chance to take it back.

Yuuki only shut the app down when he left the cafe, worrying over how hot his phone was running. He couldn’t turn it off outright; he needed access to his train pass, and Leblanc wasn’t so far from the station that he could justify turning it back on again once he got there.

Instead he cradled it in his hands, idly running his fingers over the screen, dark and lifeless. He thought he could still see Akira’s desk in the corner—but then again, every time he closed his eyes, he could see Akira’s desk, and Akira’s stove, and Akira, Akira—

Akira kept talking about what life would be like when he came home. Yuuki simultaneously craved it and dreaded it. Whenever he got to thinking about what it would be like, having Akira next to him every day for the rest of his life, something cold or warm coiled in his stomach. Whenever he got to thinking what it would be like, having Akira cook for him and cooking for him in turn—Akira in the bath, Akira sprawled out on the couch and exhausted from work and letting the TV run in the background as he fought off a nap, Akira pulling him to bed after one too many all-nighters…

Yuuki could care. Yuuki wanted to care. He wanted to care so badly it brought frustrated tears to his eyes because he would never be the kind of person who deserved Akira. Akira deserved someone with fire and passion and life—and Yuuki, it seemed, was always one bad thought away from jumping off a building—

He called Ryuji, the only one who seemed like he’d pick up his phone. Yusuke and Futaba were far too spacey to answer, usually.

Ryuji picked up on the fourth ring, just as the train entered the station. “Hey, Yuuki. Wassup?”

He could hear the clink of dishes in the background and unintelligible muttering from the TV in the cafe; Ryuji had mentioned staying late sometimes to help Mr. Sakura clean up, and Mr. Sakura had mentioned needing to get rid of some old curry he wouldn’t be able to sell anymore, as if curry could go bad. Apparently this was a regular thing—Yusuke had touched up the paint and varnish for a week’s worth of food; Futaba had most of Leblanc’s accounts digitized and under the heaviest securities she could code—and Yuuki felt a jolt.

He couldn’t even help out Mr. Sakura. What the hell was he doing bothering Ryuji? “I, uh—I thought I forgot something at the cafe,” he hastily lied, “but it was actually really buried in my pocket. Just found it. Sorry about that.”

“Uh-huh,” Ryuji said, dryly.

Shit, was he pissed? “I’ll, um, just let you go, then—”

“Actually, I forgot to ask something earlier,” Ryuji said. “You gonna listen to that new Kanamin Kitchen album?”

“I—huh?” The train left. He was standing in the spring chill in Yongen-Jaya’s station, staring as it whizzed by. Maybe the eyes staring at him were just in his imagination.

“Dude, I am so stoked for Tomoe’s single!” Ryuji went on. Yuuki could hear the grin in his voice. “Classy chick like that’s gotta be great, right? What d’you think she’s doing? Enka? She’d probably kill with that.”

“I, uh, didn’t know you like enka.”

“When someone as hot as Tomoe’s doing it, who cares? Damn, I can’t wait until it comes out! It’s gonna be sweet as hell!”

It was safe to say he had no idea what was going on. “Yeah, I bet it will,” he said, trying to remember the last time he’d gotten excited for anything or anyone other than Akira and coming up blank. He’d mostly felt relief at his entrance exams scores, so they didn’t count.

“Which one’s your favorite? Bet it’s Nozomi.”

“I prefer Akira,” he said, without thinking.

Ryuji laughed. “You got it bad, huh?”

“Do I really?” His therapist wasn’t quite telling him the relationship was unhealthy. It was wrong for it to be so one-sided, they both agreed—Yuuki wasn’t actually being listened to, he treated Akira like a sentient pet, Akira himself had no idea what Yuuki even looked like—but Yuuki wasn’t going to give up yet. They could go on proper dates and get to know each other once Akira was back home, and until then Yuuki could hold onto hope, even if doing so meant he felt his therapist was giving him the nasty eye every time he walked out the door.

(His therapist said they were too dependent on each other. They needed to branch out, make more friends—Yuuki was beginning to think the man hadn’t quite believed his explanation of dimensional kidnapping, but was not about to haul Akira out in front of him.

…Maybe he should find a new therapist.)

“Ain’t nothing wrong with that,” Ryuji said. “Aside from, y’know, all the dimension shit. Wish I could find somebody like that.”

“Maybe they’ve been kidnapped by demons,” Yuuki said. “Maybe they’re waiting for you to save them.”

“‘Them,’ huh?”

“Uh, sorry.”

“Nah, it’s cool,” he said. After a pause, he went on, “You ever think about what it would be like? To just—not care about what was in someone’s pants?”

“I have a virtual boyfriend, Ryuji,” Yuuki deadpanned. “Until I met him I thought I was straight. Maybe I just like the attention.”

“Don’t we all?” he snorted. “’Course, somebody like Yusuke or Takamaki can have anybody they want—they’re hot and prolly gonna wind up rich enough that no one’s gonna care about how weird they are. Then again, I don’t think Yusuke gets my guy talk. He’s art-sexual, I swear.”

Yuuki settled in a nearby waiting chair. The seat was cold. He was not going to tell Ryuji about his recent wet dreams, definitely not. Sometimes he wondered if they’d be different if Akira was a girl.

Maybe he’d never been straight at all.

“I think the term you’re looking for is asexual,” he said instead.

Ryuji scoffed. “Nope. He’s art-sexual. He once told me every type of woman is his type, because they’re all beautiful, or something. He then said that every type of man is his type, too, for the same damn reason. Like I was just talking about models for his art pieces or something. He’s art-sexual.”

“I don’t think it’s that simple,” Yuuki said. Yusuke had been raised and trained to appreciate the entire world with an artist’s eye. To go days on nothing but rice and salt and water, or on next to no sleep, in order to keep painting. He was probably still struggling to find himself, after everything Madarame put him through.

“You never know, dude,” Ryuji insisted. “He could be a headline one day. ‘Local Man Tossed Out of Museum Caught Masturbating to Art.’ Picture it.”

This wasn’t fair to Yusuke. Maybe if he were right there, able to laugh it off the way Ryuji was—but he’d probably get offended. Yusuke wouldn’t know what he wanted until Madarame was long behind him, until his teacher’s ghost didn’t haunt his every step. “This isn’t why I called you,” Yuuki said.

“Yeah? Then why did you call me?”

“Well, uh—the thing, I told you that.”

“What thing?”

“My, uh, keys?” His voice cracked.

“Okay, so you found your keys,” Ryuji said. “What else?”

“I shouldn’t be bothering you anymore—”

“Yuuki, dude. We’re friends. It ain’t gonna bother me. When we’re older and I have a girlfriend of my own and I’m insecure about it, I’ll hit you up, yeah?”

He tried to imagine Ryuji in ten or twenty years—either a bodybuilder or a coach with a paunch. The thought made him snort. “Yeah, okay. But—are you sure? I said all that earlier, and it had to be way too much…”

“Kamoshida got to everybody. Not just me n’ Suzui n’ Takamaki. So I get you on that.” Ryuji sighed. “And it’s not like you can talk to Akira about it, can you? So it’s either me or Futaba or Yusuke, and I guess we both know how good they’d be at listening.”

Heavy conversation was still way too much for the former shut-in, and Yusuke didn’t even understand the nuances of everyday small-talk—he was getting better but still tended to talk like everything he saw was going to be his next masterpiece, despite grimacing immediately afterwards—and probably wouldn’t understand relationship talk at all.

“So?” Ryuji prompted.

“If he ever comes back,” Yuuki started, “I feel like he’s going to be disappointed in me. I’m just this scrawny guy in front of a keyboard who only works out so he doesn’t lose his breath going up a flight of stairs. I barely know what I want to do with my life. I’m not hero material.”

“You’ll be his hero.”

“That’s not the point!” His voice echoed all around him. A couple of people passing by turned to look at his outburst; he lowered his voice. “The app makes me seem perfect. I pick answers I think he’ll like, and he likes me even more. There’s no way he’ll like the real me. I trip over air, I walk into poles, half the time I can’t say what I mean to say… He doesn’t deserve that.”

“Maybe he’ll like the real you.”

“No, he won’t,” he said. “He’s worth so much more than I am. He deserves someone who’ll keep him happy.”

“Okay,” Ryuji said. Now he was sounding pissed. “Let’s say he shows up right in front of you, right now. Imagine telling him what you told me. What would he look like when you got done?”

“I don’t know.” Akira was never angry, except for that one week Ryuji stole his phone. “Disappointed?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a scrawny desk-jockey.”

“Do you really think he’d care about what you look like after all this time?”

“Doesn’t everybody? It’s kind of a thing, you know.”

“But do you think he’d care?”

“Maybe,” Yuuki said. But… “Akira sees the potential in everything. Maybe he’d see whether I’d grow up to be hot or not.”

Ryuji groaned. “Remind me to never be a therapist.” A pause. “Yuuki. I don’t even know the guy and I know what he’d say. Some shit about how cute you’ll be walking into shit, and… that he doesn’t deserve you.”

Yuuki sucked in a breath at the stutter of his heart. “What?”

“You stuck with him—some crazy guy everybody else wrote off as a freaking virus, some amnesiac guy who’s in another dimension, who’s died a bajillion times and ruled over a planet. You gave him the chance to talk to his folks—you didn’t have to do that. You gave him the chance to talk to Ms. Akechi—you didn’t have to do that, either. When he gets back he’s gonna have like, three homes who’ll be happy to take him in. And a job. Hell, man, you remember Nijima, from last year?”

“The one who broke up that mafia ring?”

“Yeah, her. Student council prez. She effin’ promised to tutor him, personally, in her free time. She was top of her class, man! And nobody would’ve known about him if you didn’t say anything!”

“But I didn’t say anything,” he protested. “That was all you guys. I would’ve kept him to myself, because who was going to believe me?”

“That ain’t true,” Ryuji argued. “You didn’t have to explain everything to us, but you did. And even his folks know now, too. You’re giving ‘em closure or whatever in case he doesn’t make it back, and you didn’t have to.”

Yuuki chuckled, entirely without mirth. The ticket seller glanced over and went back to his magazine. “You keep talking about how I’m such a good person, blabbing his situation to everyone I know. We could be laughing about it for all he knows. We could be leading him along. He doesn’t know anything about any of us, okay, so how could he possible say he doesn’t deserve me?”

“I already said!” Ryuji growled. “‘Cause you stuck with him! Anybody who’d stick by me in that kinda situation would be way out of my league—you think just anybody’s gonna want to do that?”

He broke off, presumably to breathe—Yuuki could hear him counting down under his breath through the receiver—and someone mumbled something, too far away for Yuuki to hear.

Ryuji’s “Yeah, okay,” was distant, too, and there was static as his phone changed hands. More soft talking, the very distant bell of Leblanc’s door opening.

“Sheesh, what a handful you all are,” came Mr. Sakura’s voice, and Yuuki bit down the urge to apologize. It wasn’t a serious scolding; Mr. Sakura had that slight lilt to his tone that meant it didn’t bother him as much as it would, say, Kamoshida, or Yuuki’s parents.

“I didn’t realize you were still there, sir,” Yuuki said. “I riled him up, didn’t I?”

“He riled himself up,” was the response. “If only he knew how to use that temper of his. Anyway, I think I know what he was getting at.”

“You do?”

“Kid went from one bad place to another. No doubt there’re some things he’s picked up to help him survive—not necessarily good things. You follow?”

He was about to say no when he realized it wasn’t true. Akira was always smiling, sure, but it felt like he was trying to brace himself for another calamity in the making; Yuuki wasn’t sure what could possibly come after having his own mind ripped apart, but there was no way it was going to be good. And Akira wasn’t willing to commit mass genocide just to send himself home—he wasn’t ruthless or cutthroat like Goro was, and instead placed every life on that distant colony ship far higher than his own. There wasn’t a single person or spirit that Akira would condemn—not even the people who tried, over and over, to use him or end his life.

“You mean we’re the same,” Yuuki said, then winced. “Or, almost the same.”

“I mean you’re both not in good places right now,” Mr. Sakura said, “and you’re not going to be in good places for a long time. Who knows how long it might take for that kid to recover from all of this mess?”

That was true. Akira was being put through the wringer and probably still had much ahead of him left to face. What was abuse from some gross coach compared to that?

Mr. Sakura said, “I think it’s not about whether you deserve each other. You’ll figure that out on your own, or together, when you’ve got the chance to meet face to face. But it’s not going to go anywhere if you don’t give it a chance, and personally, I think that kid wants to. You’re all he talks about, you know.”

“I know,” Yuuki whispered. “Because I’m all he knows.”

A heavy sigh. “Kid—I don’t know what to tell you. I run a cafe. You could be right—or you could be wrong. But you have to give him a chance to figure that out for himself. If you cut it off before it’s even begun, how will either of you know?”

“I haven’t even told my parents,” he blurted out. “And Akira’s parents—how could they accept that? That I—that I took their son away from them? What if we wind up with nothing but each other and it makes us hate each other?”

“You aren’t going to wind up with just the two of you,” Mr. Sakura said. An announcement for the next train played over the intercom; Yuuki, for once, hadn’t realized how many people were passing by because he was busy staring at his shoes, too focused on keeping his voice down. “You’ve got all of us, remember? I’ll let you both stay in the attic, if you need to. God knows there’s more than enough room up there. Now catch your train.”

Yuuki’s protest was cut off by the connection dropping—Mr. Sakura had hung up on him, and now he felt worse than ever, dragging everyone he knew down with his problems. None of them understood that Yuuki just wasn’t the kind of person worth loving. He was selfish and obsessive—and, thinking back to the day Ryuji took his phone—manipulative, too.

Exactly the kind of person Akira needed to get away from.

Yuuki forced himself onto the train when it finally sped into the station, his feet feeling like his shoes were filled with cement and his gaze glued firmly to the floor.

He didn’t notice Ryuji standing by the station entrance, only slightly out of breath, watching him walk like the living dead. He didn’t notice how Ryuji’s face contorted—from frustration to sadness to anger, hot and burning. He didn’t notice how Ryuji turned and sprinted back up the steps, teeth grit and fists clenched, and didn’t stop until he was back in Leblanc.

 

* * *

 

 

Yuuki avoided both Leblanc and his phone for the next week. He kept the apartment clean and cooked and studied—the usual, but now so filled with an aching, empty void that Yuuki was afraid he’d drown if he tried to fill it. Food didn’t taste like anything; getting out of bed or showering was a hassle he didn’t want to have to do but forced himself to anyway.

He’d snap out of it, he thought, if he could see Akira again—but at the same time he didn’t want to face whatever secret Akira had been hiding, because he had been hiding one, hadn’t he? Something big enough that he didn’t want to tell Yuuki, and it made Yuuki realize that he wasn’t all Akira had at all.

Akira had a whole planet’s worth of people to root for him. Akira had friends over there, friends who’d seen him at his worst and didn’t care—friends who took care of him when they barely knew him, friends who fought for him, friends who loved him like family.

No, Yuuki wasn’t all Akira had— _Akira_ was all _Yuuki_ had, and as the week stretched on, he took it as proof.

On Friday night his parents were both home at the same time, for once. Yuuki cooked while they lounged on the couch, watching some silly game show with a laugh track that made his ears hurt. He set the table while the credits rolled, and only Hirotaka said “Thank you, Yuuki,” as they sat down.

His mother stared at her dinner—hamburger steak and salad, rice on the side—with a pinched face and didn’t even bother with the usual blessing. “When did you learn to cook?” she asked, prodding at the meat with a chopstick.

“Last year,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. He wasn’t sure if it was a good ‘oh’ or a bad one, and tried to focus on his food.

The table was quiet; if not for the TV still running in the background, the silence would have been oppressive. The game show had given way to a talk show where the host mercilessly interrogated celebrity guests, and Risette smiled with blindingly white teeth in her seat.

She was pretty, but she was no Akira.

“So, Yuuki,” his father said, pulling his attention back to the table, “how has school been?”

“It lets out next week.”

“And your graduation?”

“The last day,” he said. “I know you’re busy. You don’t have to come.”

“Of course we’ll be there,” his mother said. “It’s your graduation. Tell me you got into a good university.”

“It’s okay.” Not the best school out there—Yuuki’s interest in coding had died over the week, and he was starting to think going with a general studies program was a good idea—but it was a school, and the job acceptance rate of graduates was decent.

His mother huffed. He turned back to the TV; Risette was telling a story about a boy she knew in high school in her hometown. “A total playboy!” she said with a laugh. “That’s what I thought, anyway—he was cool, and nice, and always willing to listen—”

(Someone like that would be perfect for Akira.)

“Yuuki,” his mother said, sternly, “you need to care more. Stop staring at that dead-brained idol and listen to me.”

“Risette was top ten of her class,” he said.

“Out in some stick in the mud town that can’t be too hard,” she sniffed. “But this is Tokyo. You need to get your act together and take your schooling seriously; how else are you going to be able to support a family?”

 _Oh, God,_ he thought.

“Girls don’t want boys who don’t work for their future. I bet that one”—she motioned to the TV—“is just some deadbeat by now barely scraping by. Do you want to be a deadbeat, Yuuki?”

“Hiyoko,” Hirotaka started, but his wife interrupted.

“ _Do you_ , Yuuki?”

He was so tired. This again—the thin line of her mouth, the pinching of her nostrils, the clipped way she spoke—that he’d thought was behind him after Kamoshida went to jail. She’d barely said two words to him for two years, and now she wanted to probe him about his future?

“I asked you a question, Yuuki.”

Risette was talking about how she had support from her entire hometown. They sent her cards and flowers near-monthly; whenever she visited her friends and family held a giant welcome-home party, and it was hard going two blocks without running into someone who was thankful she was putting their tiny country town on the map, and no, they didn’t sell merchandise of her there. They thought it was tacky and rude.

Hiyoko Mishima slammed her chopsticks on the table; the noise made him jump. “Yuuki. Answer me.”

Risette’s newest album-in-the-works was all about bravery, but Yuuki could barely muster up enough courage to say, “I think I’m gay.”

“What?”

“I,” he choked, and had to pause. The look on his mother’s face was livid; she was was slowly turning red. He had to force the rest out under laughter from the TV. “I think I’m gay.”

She turned to the television. Hirotaka shut it off and returned to his seat. “Hiyoko,” he said, “let’s think about this calmly.”

“There is no calmly, Hiro,” she spat. “Are you listening to this? He thinks he’s gay! He’s going to ruin his future with thoughts like that—how can he meet a nice girl if he’s out fooling around with _men_?”

Hirotaka took a deep breath and ignored her. “Yuuki, are you sure?”

“Not totally,” he said. He wasn’t sure if his feelings would be the same once Akira got here, but he wasn’t about to admit to his parents that he was in a relationship already. He wasn’t about to admit that, lately, without Akira to talk to, he found his thoughts spiraling to other men instead—Yusuke, his soft, rich tenor in Yuuki’s ear, passing him napkins in the cafe; Ryuji, the feeling of his muscles bunching and rippling under his skin as he put Yuuki into a headlock. Idols like Risette— _girls_ like Risette or Takamaki—were pretty and soft, even if they were walking dictionaries with insatiable appetites like Futaba, and Yuuki was finding he didn’t care much for them.

(He’d looked, in a fit of self-denial, for something to prove that what he was feeling was passing. Just a phase. It had slowly sunk in that he’d been fooling himself for a few good years, give or take; none of the magazines hidden in his room did anything anymore, but a quick online search of their opposites did.)

But he wasn’t going to say he was sure until he was sure. Until he’d had the chance to find out for himself whether what he felt was real or not, and he didn’t think it would be fair to Akira to start exploring until after the other boy returned. He opened his mouth to say so, but his mother beat him to it.

“‘Not totally?’” she sneered. “Then you might as well not be bothering your father and I with this. We don’t work ourselves to the bone so you can experiment, Yuuki. Unless that coach of yours put these thoughts into your head? Is that it? Is that what he did—is that where those bruises of yours came from?”

“Hiyoko,” Hirotaka said.

“Don’t ‘Hiyoko’ me! Answer me, Yuuki! Did he or did he not—”

He couldn’t help it; he started laughing. What started as a chuckle gradually evolved into a full blown fit until he was hunched over the table gasping for breath. “‘Did he or didn’t he,’” he mimicked in a high falsetto, when he could finally speak. “‘Did Kamoshida touch you, Yuuki? Did he hurt you?’ Two years later, now you decide you care? It’s way too late for that.”

“Don’t you dare mock me, young man!”

“‘Don’t mock me, Yuuki! I only thought those bruises were from you doing drugs! I only thought it was best for your future!’”

He glared, gripping the edge of the table until his nails dug into the wood; then his vision went black and he was halfway to the floor, held up by his father and with a viciously stinging cheek. He tasted iron. There was a sauce stain on his shirt; his plate shattered below him. His hands stung.

His mother started a shrill tirade that was lost to the fuzz of static in his ears. His father tugged him close, whispered, “Go pack a bag, Yuuki, okay?” and let him down gently.

Yuuki laid there on the floor, uncomprehending until he saw Hirotaka’s feet round the table. He was trying to calm Hiyoko down and failing; he stumbled back when she pushed him and Yuuki used to opportunity to crawl away.

He had to force himself to believe this wasn’t the same thing that happened to Akira. No one had told him to leave, but what else could he be packing a bag for? Would he even want to stay here tonight, anyway?

No, he didn’t. He wanted out of this apartment as fast as possible, and his brain raced as he struggled to change his shirt; would Hiyoko try to toss his things like a jealous ex, or would she just sulk and go back to acting like he barely existed? He’d take his laptop at least, on the pretense of getting work done, and his uniform and a change of clothes or two and his schoolbooks. His wallet for sure; his phone, definitely.

There wasn’t much in his room after all, or at least nothing he couldn’t live without. Little knick-knacks he’d come to think Akira would like; old tests and bits of homework on his desk. He’d kept his acceptance letter in his English textbook, so that would be fine. The books on coding he could just buy again if he cared to.

Was his life so empty, or did it just feel that way?

He shoved a couple of CDs in the bag, too: Risette, Kanamin Kitchen, some rapper one of his cousins loved. The framed picture of Akira on the wall went in next, though he was sure the glass would break.

A knock on his door. Hirotaka, on the other side, his hair suddenly grayer than Yuuki remembered. He entered quickly. “I don’t know what to say, Yuuki,” he said.

“Are you kicking me out?”

“What? No, never.” A hand on his shoulder, heavy and warm. “You’re my son; I’ve already failed you once. Your mother—she just needs time, that’s all. You understand, don’t you?”

He didn’t. His mother was the same bitch as always; the distant days of his childhood where they could all laugh together were gone, and all that had replaced them were expectations he couldn’t keep. He had a feeling she was never going to change, because he was never going to be the son she wanted him to be. But he said, “Okay,” and nodded.

“If you need money for a hotel, let me know. I can wire you the funds. Just—promise me you’ll stay safe, Yuuki.”

“For how long?”

Hirotaka sighed. “If she’s not done by graduation, she’ll just have to get over it.”

“But, I,” he said, then stopped. The look in his father’s eyes—he’d never seen that before.

“I failed you once—no, twice, or however many times. But I won’t do it again. You’re my son, and I love you, no matter who you love or why, Yuuki. No matter what you choose to do. And if your mother can’t accept that, then perhaps she’s the one who needs to leave.”

What? “You—you can’t mean that.”

“I don’t want to mean it, but I will if I have to.”

(Hirotaka looked like Akira—that spark in his eyes was almost the same. Fierce, and protective, and it swallowed Yuuki whole.)

“Okay, Yuuki?”

“Okay,” he said, hefting his bag.

“Then you should go,” Hirotaka said, “not forever, not permanently, but just for now. Let me know when you’re someplace safe. You don’t have to tell me where.”

“Okay,” he said, and slung his schoolbag over his shoulder. It felt silly—and strangely permanent, no matter what his father said—to be carrying two bags at once.

But he walked out the door—out the lobby—down the street to the station—and no one said a word.

 

* * *

 

 

His feet carried him to Leblanc before he even realized it. It was late; far later than he thought when he checked the time on his phone, but the cafe’s lights were still on. He could see the TV in the corner showing a blurry news channel, and Mr. Sakura’s head was bowed over the sink as he washed dishes.

The sign said ‘Open’ so Yuuki walked in. One of his bags caught the door.

“Welcome,” said Mr. Sakura, without turning around. “Be with you in a sec.”

Yuuki didn’t know what to do. He should leave; he shouldn’t bother anyone with his problems anymore. The thought came and went and his eyes began to burn.

 _Fuck_ , he thought as the first tear fell. Crying, again.

“Oh, it’s—oh,” said Mr. Sakura. Yuuki didn’t hear him approach, but the older man took one of his bags—both of his bags—and guided him to a seat. “Sit down, sit down,” he was saying.

Yuuki slumped over the bar once he was, staring at the grain in the woodwork and feeling every tear slide down his face.

“Did you eat?” Mr. Sakura asked.

He couldn’t remember how much of dinner he’d actually eaten, couldn’t remember what it tasted like, if he’d eaten any of it at all. He didn’t think he’d ever look at hamburger steak the same way again, and though Mr. Sakura’s curry smelled as good as it always did, his stomach was twisted in knots. He wouldn’t be able to eat anything else. He nodded, faintly aware of the streak of oil his forehead was likely leaving on the bartop.

Mr. Sakura hummed a bit at that. Thinking, probably, that he was lying—but Yuuki’d gotten himself into this mess by opening his big fat mouth once—twice—tonight, and he wasn’t going to do it again, not even to defend himself. Whatever frantic energy had propelled him here was gone; he wasn’t going to find the strength to get up anytime soon.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

No. Yuuki shook his head. He didn’t want to do anything at all except listen to the drone of the newscaster, the bubble of the curry pot, the slight hiss of soap bubbles popping in the sink.

“Alright,” Mr. Sakura said, instead of pushing him to. “Then, you mind if I ask some questions? Simple ones, yes or no. I won’t make you leave even if you don’t want to answer, okay?”

Right, he’d forgotten. Mr. Sakura was probably used to kids barging into his store at all hours of the day; sometimes he swore that Yusuke and Ryuji lived here with how much they stopped by. He was probably used to this, too, teasing answers out of them.

Yuuki made himself sit up, scrubbing at his eyes with his sleeve. Suddenly he knew what Akira meant when he said he’d just gotten tired of crying, and it took several tries to clear his throat to get out a croaky, “Why?”

“Because it’s nearly ten o’clock, you’ve got two bags with you, and I’m worried.”

“You’re—but why?” he asked. “All I’ve done since we met is cause you problems, right? I—I keep bringing them here with me—there’s—there’s no way you’d want to keep dealing with them.”

“Maybe not,” said Mr. Sakura, “but you do, don’t you? Adults like me just have to grin and bear it. It’s our job to make sure the next generation grows up—well, right.”

He grimaced at that. ‘Right.’ What was ‘right’ anyway? Was it marrying a pretty girl and having a big family and a stable, well-paying job? Was Mr. Sakura like his mother, deep down?

“Something I said bothered you, huh? Care to share?”

After a long pause, Yuuki said, “I told my parents. Mom didn’t take it too well.”

“She’s one of those kinds of moms?”

“Weren’t you here when I told everyone? She thought my bruises were from drugs. Shujin was a good school, she always told me, like I was screwing up my future all on my own.”

“So she _is_ one of those kinds of moms,” Mr. Sakura said. “When they come in here, chattering on about how their kids don’t listen to them, sometimes I want to tell ‘em a thing or two, but it won’t do any good in the end. It would just drive all of my customers away.”

The bell on the door jingled. Futaba flipped the sign on her way in, then plunked herself down on a stool by the TV. “You were taking too long,” she pouted.

“Sorry, sorry,” Mr. Sakura said with a laugh. “I’ll get started closing up.”

Yuuki let him fuss with the dishes left in the sink and the pot on the stove before saying, “Is it wrong for me to like Akira? Is—would it be right for me to like girls?”

“That’s hard to say,” Mr. Sakura said. “Times are changing. Old folks like your mom and I—we can’t keep up sometimes. What used to be absolutely wrong isn’t anymore—what’s the word people are using, Futaba? Toxic?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Futaba said. “At least, a lot of Americans online do. They talk about how it’s not healthy to bottle everything up the way we’re taught to, stuff like that. When people like your mom pop up, who make you want to hide things from them, they’re toxic.”

Like a poison. That wasn’t fair, he thought. He was the weird one here, not his mother—overbearing and tight-laced as she might be, she was still thinking about what was best for him and wanting him to succeed—wasn’t that good? Wasn’t that right?

“Society will tell you one thing, and your heart will tell you another,” Mr. Sakura said. “What you choose to follow should be the one that makes you happy. I worked with too many people who put themselves through misery just because the pay was good.” He sighed, and turned to look at Futaba. “Your mother really is something else. It didn’t matter when her funding almost got cut—it didn’t matter when she had you and had to take her maternity leave—she loved her job. Sometimes her smiling face as she worked her way through some quandry or another was the only thing I needed to make my day better.”

“Mom really is amazing, isn’t she?” Futaba said with a fond smile, like she was remembering some distant memory.

“My point,” Mr. Sakura went on, “is that even if your mother thinks she knows what’s best for you, she doesn’t. It doesn’t sound like she’s trying to understand, either. But you shouldn’t feel the need to make yourself fit into her idea of you to make her happy—you’re the one who’s living your life, kid, and you don’t want to look back on it years later and regret it.”

Then he asked: “What about your father?”

“I don’t know,” Yuuki said. “He told me to leave so Mom could have to time to process everything, but I’m starting to think he needs it, too. Even though neither of them are ever home—”

He broke off. Even though neither of them were ever home, he was the one who needed to leave, as if he were poisoning the air through proximity. Hirotaka had made it sound nice and reasonable—but that was his job, wasn’t it?

( _It’s not you, Yuuki, but it really is and we can’t deal with it._ )

What if his father was like that, too? Wishing he’d fit into a mold, all nice and pretty and normal, and struggling to come to terms with the fact that Yuuki wasn’t going to be his ideal son?

“Well,” Mr. Sakura said, even as Yuuki’s breath hitched again and again but no tears came, “you’re welcome to stay here if you like. There’s a heater upstairs—I know it gets cold at night—and Futaba’s got a sizable stash of blankets up there, too.”

“You could make a fort!” Futaba suggested. “Fort Nishima!”

“I’d take you home with us, but we don’t actually have any spare futons. Unless you’d like to sleep on the couch?”

“Oh, no,” he said, too quick to turn them down. “I—um, I mean, I can find a hotel or something nearby, right? I can do that. No need for me to crash in your business.”

“Ryuji does it all the time,” Futaba stated. “He misses the last train and crashes on the couch upstairs. I think he wound up doing it last week, too.”

Last week. After his phone call?

No, no way.

“Besides, do you even have the cash for one? How long are you out of your parent’s place?”

He… didn’t know. “A week, maybe,” Yuuki said. “Dad said to give it until graduation.”

Mr. Sakura snorted and shook his head. “I suppose if they don’t show you’ll have your answer.”

“Yeah,” Yuuki agreed, though it sent a pang through his chest. They’d said they’d come, but now? He didn’t even want to think about it.

But staying in Leblanc’s attic for a week? “Are—are you sure it’d be okay for me to stay here?”

“As long as you help out a bit, it’s fine by me.”

“Amamiya’s been teaching you to cook, hasn’t he? And you clean a ton,” Futaba said. “Kind of weird, but whatevs. It’s all good, right?”

“Uh,” he said. What in the world did she mean? “Sure.”

Futaba grinned at him. Mr. Sakura patted her head, put on his coat, and patted Yuuki’s shoulder on their way out. “Make sure to lock up behind us. There’s some curry in the fridge if you get hungry.”

“Okay,” he said. “And, um, Mr. Sakura?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks,” he said, and tried to smile. He wasn’t sure if it worked, but Mr. Sakura smiled back, a wry twist to his lips, and said,

“Don’t worry about it.”

He stared at the door long after they left, Futaba chattering away to her guardian through the window, waiting for Mr. Sakura to come back and tell him he’d changed his mind. But when the clock in the kitchen chimed the hour and startled him he realized it was true.

Mr. Sakura really was letting him stay in Leblanc. For a week.

He got up and locked the door. Then he went to the fridge—there really was curry inside, so he warmed it up and took it upstairs after hauling his bags up the steps as he waited.

He’d packed drinks, somehow, and hauled one out. The curry was better than his hamburger steak ever could be—or maybe that was just relief flooding his veins. He had people on his side, people who didn’t give a damn who he decided to love or what his future job might be. He could worry about his parents later—much later—but right now he was crying tears into his second dinner of the night out of sheer gratitude.

He had people. He had other people he could count on, people who would help him when he needed it.

(Kamoshida sneered down at him. _Look at little Mishima, always needing help._

His mother glared down her nose at him. _And just how are you going to repay them, Yuuki?_ )

Well, he’d think about that later. For now he washed his dishes, used the bathroom to change, and dug Futaba’s mountain of blankets out of a large box. He didn’t want to bother with the heater—it seemed like a fire hazard—and instead swathed himself in them. They smelled faintly of coffee and curry and Futaba’s shampoo.

He felt safe. Protected.

But whenever he closed his eyes, his father’s face bloomed out of the darkness. His mother’s voice rang in his ears. Kamoshida and those bullies from middle school snickered taunts and threats that made him toss and turn.

He thought briefly of his phone, charging on the windowsill. Akira was right there—Yuuki owed him a week of attention, anyway, right? He couldn’t make it up in one night, but he could try, until he fell asleep.

He wiggled out of his blanket cocoon, shivering at how cold the attic seemed to become, and tiptoed across the floorboards, wincing at every creak and groan though no one was around to hear it. Downstairs the clock chimed another hour.

Yuuki found another outlet closer to the couch and plugged his charger in, dug his earbuds out of his bag, and then settled in, firmly telling himself that if Akira was asleep he would go straight back to bed.

Akira was not asleep.

He was at his desk, a book propped open in front of him and ignored as he stared down at the pages. All Yuuki could see of it was scrolling green code and Akira’s furrowed brow as he fiddled with a page.

**Still up?**

Akira jumped. _“Yuuki.”_ He looked relieved for a split second—then nerves took over. He fiddled with his bangs instead, staring at his hand to avoid the monitor. _“I—sorry. I was beginning to think you’d left for good.”_

There was no prompt to apologize— **I came back, didn’t I** and **I almost did** —and Yuuki bit his lip. Akira might find out he’d been having problems. He didn’t want to bother Akira with them, too, but…

Akira might not care. Akira might be just like Mr. Sakura and Futaba and Ryuji and Yusuke—he might want to know that Yuuki was human, too, and a little more broken on the inside than most. That they could match pieces together, or something sappy like that.

Akira sighed at the cold touch of the hand on his end. Interlaced his fingers with it, like they were really holding hands and not on opposite sides of a screen. _“Yuuki,”_ he said, softly. His face lit up as slowly and surely as the dawn over the horizon. _“You really didn’t leave, did you? And you came back, despite everything going on. You really are brave.”_

 _Not as brave as you_ , he tried to convey. _Not nearly as brave as you, all by yourself and still so strong. I would have collapsed in despair a dozen times over by now, would have never made it past that first memory._

 _“_ _Still so brave,”_ Akira said, and brought the metal hand to his lips to kiss its clunky, oil-stained fingers. Yuuki felt a phantom sensation across his own knuckles and gripped his phone tighter. _“I know it’s been hard. All of this, along with everything else you’ve been dealing with. But you always come back, Yuuki, and you have no idea how much that means to me. No idea.”_

 _And you don’t know what it means to me that you’re always here, just within my reach,_ Yuuki thought. _You don’t know how much I need you, how much I want you around when something goes wrong or right._

He wasn’t completely sure if that was love or not—but he and Akira could work that out together. Right now he was starting to believe Futaba’s blankets were Akira, covering him wholly and completely, wrapping him up in an embrace he never wanted to leave.

 _“_ _There’s still a little bit left,”_ Akira said after a while, when Yuuki was finally feeling sleepy. _“But we should both be in bed, shouldn’t we? We don’t need to press it; we can take our time.”_

There. That look, that faint guarded look he’d been wearing more and more often.

 _What are you hiding?_ Yuuki thought, and it must have gotten through, because Akira chuckled dryly.

 _“_ _I can’t hide anything from you, can I?”_ He moved the screen over to the robot, standing still against a wall like an avant-garde coat rack. Akira only let go once Yuuki was close enough, and very reluctantly, at that.

 _“It’s the robot,”_ he explained. _“I was checking over the blueprints again, trying to see how I’d connect the monitor, when I found a flaw. See, the monitor can’t be connected to anything else when I attach it to the body or else it’ll overload all the circuits and fry it completely. To—ah, to attach it, I’d,”_ he trailed off, unsure, tugging at his bangs again.

Yuuki waited, dread coursing through him, hot and cold and making his skin clammy.

 _“_ _I’d have to disconnect you,”_ Akira finished. _“I’m not sure whether I’d be able to get you back—whether you’d still be able to, uh, talk with me after. I don’t really know how all of this dimension stuff works, honestly. But I don’t like the thought of losing you like that. I don’t want to lose you like that. What if I manage to reestablish the connection, and it’s to someone entirely different?”_

(Yusuke had a similar app on his phone. One that wouldn’t activate. Was it in preparation for this? When, exactly, had he gotten it? Was it after Akira had finished the robot, or before?)

_“_ _So—so I tried not to mention it. I thought it might just make you worry more, and you don’t need that right now. Right? And—and I found all this out after I finished my—”_

His what?

Akira was outright flushed by now, biting his lip and tugging at his hair. He wouldn’t look at the screen—at Yuuki—and Yuuki marveled at his fidgeting. Akira was never nervous like this—or maybe Yuuki had never seen it, but after nearly three years, he’d hoped he would have. Akira was acting like a shy schoolgirl confessing to her crush—but they were already dating, sort of. What else could he want?

 _“_ _Just ask him,”_ Akira was mumbling to himself, over and over. _“What could go wrong? And you’ll feel better after, no matter what the answer is. Just ask him. Get it over with. Come on, Ion.”_

(For a moment he was confused—Akira never referred to himself by that long-ago name Yuuki had decided to never use. There was no one in Akira’s mental world to call him by that name, either, just the people in his memories, the people he’d have to go back out and face again if he ever wanted to get home.)

Akira took several deep breaths. Yuuki matched him, suddenly as nervous as the other was. Akira couldn’t want to break up, right?

No, no way.

 _“_ _Yuuki,”_ Akira said, haltingly, as if still trying to work up the courage, _“you already know how much you mean to me. And—and I mean a lot to you, too, don’t I?”_

**Of course you do.**

A shaky grin. _“Right, right. Well, what I want to ask is—um—would—would you—”_

His hands were shaking. Yuuki moved that cold, metal hand over and gripped them, dragged them out of his hair before Akira tore chunks out and down to his chest so Yuuki could see his face. Akira was tearing up and sniffling, his eyes squeezed shut, those steadying breaths absolutely useless.

 _“_ _W-w-would,”_ he stammered, _“w-would you m-marry me, Yuuki?”_

 _Oh_ , Yuuki thought, before his brain short-circuited.

Akira wanted to marry him.

Akira wanted to marry _him_. Of all people—out of the hundreds he could have been helped by, out of the millions he was formerly emperor over, out of all the friends he was starting to recall—

He wanted Yuuki. _Why_ , he wanted to ask. Why Yuuki—didn’t Akira know how much of a crybaby he was? How all the little things nettled at him and settled like barbs in his brain? How much trouble he caused everyone by making them worry?

 _“_ _I’ve been meaning to ask for a while,”_ Akira was saying, _“but it never seemed like the right time and then when it did something happened to you and I thought I couldn’t make you stress even more, not if I really loved you, and—and then you disappeared for a week, right after I told my parents I’d marry you even if they didn’t give their blessing, and it feels silly but I might have just rambled about you the entire time and told them how brave you were and how strong you were and how you always made me want to be braver and stronger, too, so that I could face whatever’s left and come home even—even if I had to drag Goro along behind me, kicking and screaming, because I know you care about him, too, and I know it would weigh on you if he got left behind, and—”_

 **Ion** , said the prompt. “Akira,” Yuuki said, with a slight chuckle. **You’re rambling now.**

Akira stopped himself mid-rant and somehow flushed even harder. _“Sorry,”_ he said.

**It’s cute.**

Akira ducked his head to bury it in his hands, still encased in the monitor’s metal one. He didn’t get very far, and Yuuki watched as his face gradually darkened even more. It couldn’t be good for him—but then again, he was a mental aspect of himself. Could he even get hurt?

Still, it made Yuuki smile and laugh a bit. To think Akira could get this worked up over him, of all the people in the entire universe and beyond. It made him want to rub reassuring circles into the backs of Akira’s hands, made him want to press their foreheads together so Yuuki could feel the heat emanating there, made him want to say _yes_ in between peppered kisses.

He wanted it so badly it made his chest ache. His heart hurt with want, and his head swam with desire.

(It was after midnight. He had school in the morning—this was probably just sleep deprivation. He was tired, that’s all.)

A long time ago—two, going on three, years—he never would have thought he’d be lying around on a crappy second-hand couch covered in enough blankets to smother him while being proposed to by a guy he’d never met in real life. He’d thought he’d had standards, impossibly high ones, but it turned out he’d just been looking at the wrong things the whole time.

The right thing was Akira, and it always would be.

**Of course I will.**

 

* * *

 

 

Akira passed out after that due to sheer relief, and Yuuki cradled his phone close to his chest and fell asleep with its heat pressing against him. He pretended it was Akira, as he sometimes did, and woke up to his fourth alarm despite it being muffled by the sheets.

Mr. Sakura was already down in the cafe, prepping to open, and he treated Yuuki to breakfast curry. It was definitely not something Yuuki ever thought he’d eat so early, but Futaba gobbled it down in record time and then ran off to go sleep.

“Is she thinking about going back to school?” he found himself asking. Futaba was far too smart for a high school curriculum, but he’d read somewhere that socializing with others their own age was good for people like her.

“She’s going back once the term starts up,” Mr. Sakura said. “I just hope her sleep cycle’s regulated by then. She shouldn’t be staying up so late.”

Yuuki hummed in agreement. There were studies that said otherwise, but society enjoyed dictating everything to everyone and anyone who differed usually suffered. Yuuki thought of the days he’d spent wrapped up in one coding project or another, surviving off of energy drinks and instant noodles and Akira’s voice in his ear. He’d come a long way since then.

He wound up staying late to clean up the dishes—Yongen-Jaya was closer to Shujin than his apartment, and he only had to switch trains twice, which left him with a good quarter of an hour to get ready. He only needed five minutes to throw on his uniform, brush his teeth, and attempt to fix his hair—more than enough time to wash a couple of plates.

...And more than enough time to convince himself that the last half of last night’s talk with Akira was just a dream. That he’d fallen asleep, desperately wishing for someone to be by his side, and dreamed up the proposal. The Akira he knew wasn’t such a stammering, blushing mess—that was Yuuki all the way—so it couldn’t have been real.

(It still felt nice to think about it, though. Him and Akira, in a cottage in some distant countryside town. A garden in the yard, a dog or a cat napping on the porch, peaceful tranquility for days on end…)

He nearly ran into a woman waiting for the train, and shook himself out of his daydreams.

Real life was waiting.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One day I'll know what I'm doing, even if that day isn't today.


	7. The Third Year, Part Five

 

That night he and the others met up in Leblanc’s attic—it was more the usual thing the rest of them did, and Yuuki was just along for the ride because that was where he would be sleeping for the next week. He had to explain the bags in the corner and the mess of blankets he’d forgotten to fold and eventually what led to him sleeping in a drafty cafe attic in the first place.

When he was done, Ryuji said, “Shit, that sucks, man.”

Yusuke nodded his agreement. “And with graduation right around the corner…”

“I know it’s bad timing,” Yuuki said, “but it just came out. I don’t want to think about how long she’s been thinking about this kind of stuff—like, did she have my whole life planned out in her head? Is that the kind of thing parents do?”

“Dunno,” Ryuji said. “But that sounds like some serious freak out. Maybe all the stress just got to her.”

“What, so she just blew up?” Futaba asked.

“Some people do,” Yusuke said, “and others break down.”

The attic went quiet. All Yuuki could think of, in the relative safety of the cafe and far, far removed from his parents, was that Ryuji was right. All the little things over the years building up—all the hours she’d been working, the Kamoshida scandal, the principal’s scandal—until Yuuki dropped one last piece of information on her back. It was his fault.

All his fault, again.

Across the table Ryuji was staring at his phone, the screen dark, with a look that said he was remembering Kamoshida, too. Yusuke slumped in his chair, for once not bothering with the bangs falling across his eyes. He blinked as slowly as an owl, as if every thought caused him pain and he had to brace himself for each one. Futaba sat swaddled in blankets on the couch, her glasses shining with light from her laptop even though her hands remained still. Yuuki thought he saw her ghosts reflected there, then realized that was ridiculous.

“Okay,” he said, and nearly winced at how loud his voice was—and how obvious fake his cheer was. “Uh, new topic: have you been trying that app out anymore, Yusuke? Has it worked yet?”

“The app?” Yusuke grimaced. “Did I not tell you? A child threw my phone in Inokashira Lake last week.”

Ryuji gaped. “For real?! What’d the punk do that for?”

“He saw my sketchbook and wanted me to draw him a picture, but I didn’t have any free pages. I had to tell him no. I had my phone out to take a picture of the scenery, regardless, and, well…”

He sighed and slumped further in his seat, the very picture of dejection. “I promised Nakanohara I could pay for a new one, but this one doesn’t have Akira’s app on it, I’m afraid.”

Futaba muttered, “Yeah, and now you’re out lunch for the next month or two.”

“I can get by,” Yusuke protested.

“Why’re you asking, though?” Ryuji asked. “Something going on with Akira?”

Yuuki looked down at his phone, sitting on the table. Since they were all brooding already, he might as well drop this on them now, too. “Futaba saw the robot he was building, right?”

“Yeah,” Futaba grinned, “that thing was sweet.”

“Well, he told me last night that if he wants to put the—uh, the receiver in it he’s going to have to disconnect it completely.” It felt like all the air in his lungs was getting sucked into a black hole. He took a deep, steadying breath. “And he’s not sure we’re going to reconnect after.”

“Whoa, talk about some shitty luck,” Futaba said, awed. “Seriously, zero on the luck stat bad. Did he tell you the chances of succeeding?”

Yuuki shook his head. “We just know it’s bad. I thought—if Yusuke still had that new app, I’d be fine with it. Maybe that was what it was for. But now…”

“And you can’t exactly change phones ‘til you get it, either. Way too freakin’ expensive,” Ryuji added.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But, uh, maybe he’ll find a workaround. Or something. I-I’m sure he can do it.”

The others shared glances across the table. Ryuji leaned forward. “You’ll always have us, man.”

“There is the chance he’ll come back,” Yusuke said. “Try to hold onto that.”

“We’ve got your back, Nishima,” Futaba said with a grin.

He stared at them—half in disbelief, half in relief—and wondered what Akira would look like, sitting at the table spinning his pen mindlessly. It already seemed like he belonged there; Yuuki could imagine him at the head of the table, one ear on the conversation around him, one eye on what everyone was doing. He’d been weirdly good at that as emperor, and it was hard not to see him as anything but a leader.

Yuuki swallowed back the sharp sting of tears at the image—Akira, surrounded on all sides, solving problems before everything got too out of hand, ever-compassionate yet as unyielding as a mountain, making friends everywhere he went, _that_ Akira surely wouldn’t need him—and gave his best attempt at a smile. “Thanks, guys.”

Ryuji grinned at him. “What’re friends for, yeah?”

 

* * *

 

 

The truth was, Yuuki didn’t quite believe them. They had to know it, and yet they sat around for another hour or two chatting and snacking until Yusuke and Ryuji had to catch the trains home. Futaba left not long after, and then Mr. Sakura was calling up to him to use the bathhouse across the alley before he closed up for the night.

Yuuki did, and felt so conspicuous and out-of-place despite the lack of other patrons he only soaked for about five minutes. He was sure there were still lingering bruises from Kamoshida’s abuse—sure there were some kind of scars, somewhere he couldn’t see but everyone else could—the same way his mother’s hand print was still swelling up his cheek, and he didn’t want to deal with any awkward questions. Mr. Sakura hadn’t asked, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t considering it.

(No, he felt exposed—the last time anyone had walked in on him bathing was two years ago, and he could still feel the imprints of his mother’s nails on his skin, could still feel them digging in hard enough to draw blood, could still feel them pinching and prodding—)

Mr. Sakura still didn’t ask; he only raised a brow at Yuuki’s swift return, closed up shop, and left him to lock the door.

Yuuki did and retreated upstairs. He burrowed himself in Futaba’s blankets once more, dug out his phone, and started the app.

It was probably bad that he’d traded control over Akira for dependency on Akira, but the boy on the other side of the screen felt like the only one who wouldn’t walk on eggshells around him anymore. Akira would be able to tell him he was going too far; Akira would be able to help him reconcile faster; Akira would insist on staying by his side, even if he was relegated to the other side of the room. Akira wouldn’t give him pitying looks or leave him with a pat on the shoulder.

God, he needed to stop this. Over and over again, his thoughts spiraling down the same well-trod paths as always—no wonder his therapist had started suggesting colleges in other towns, smaller ones in the countryside or villages he could recuperate in before rejoining society as he knew it.

But Yuuki knew the truth: even without Akira he would have these problems. He would just transfer everything he felt onto something or someone new, and then he’d be back at square one again, desperate for the little things that meant he meant something to someone. And he couldn’t just… stop thinking that way. It felt wrong to think anything else.

(He ate up praise like a child locked in a candy store, only to wonder where it all went when the last of it was gone.)

“I’m so pathetic,” he muttered as the app loaded. Akira’s face faded into view, perusing over the robot blueprints again, brow furrowed in concentration. His hair was long enough now to fall into his eyes, and he kept brushing it out of the way.

Yuuki contented himself to watch for a while, listening to the scratch of Akira’s pencil as he worked through the equations and gave the occasional thoughtful hum. Only when he slumped over his desk and gave a defeated groan did Yuuki move the metal hand to pat his head.

 _“_ _Yuuki,”_ Akira said. He sounded tired, his throat croaked. _“How long have you been there?”_

“Long enough,” Yuuki said, despite knowing the words wouldn’t get through. “But I like just watching you. It’s nice.”

 _“_ _You should’ve—”_ he broke off with a yawn, _“you should’ve interrupted. I wouldn’t have minded. I’ve been looking at these blueprints since I got up; I think my eyes are crossed.”_

He turned his head to look at the screen, and exactly as he said, they were. Yuuki could tell he was doing it on purpose, but he looked ridiculous like that, and couldn’t help but laugh.

As if in answer, Akira chuckled. _“I must be more tired than I thought. It almost feels like you’re actually here with me. I swear I could hear you laughing just now.”_

 _“_ _That,”_ announced a haughty tone Yuuki had slowly become to hate, _“is just proof that you’ve succeeded in deepening your bond to its deepest levels! Well, mentally, anyway.”_

Morgana, yellow tie in place and cat ears twitching, sauntered over. Akira shot out of his chair and, over the noise of it hitting the floor, said, _“Morgana! I thought you were mad at us. Why—I mean—no, I_ do _mean—”_

Morgana laughed. _“After you came begging to me for one last, special favor? How could I say no to my favorite lighthouse keeper?”_

 _“_ _I’m your only lighthouse keeper,”_ Akira mumbled.

 _“_ _I was really tempted to refuse, you know,”_ Morgana informed them. _“You just went on ahead, heedless of the consequences—but, now you know, and I can tell it’s hurting you. This is the least I can do to help ease the pain.”_

 _“_ _You’re saying there’s no way to avoid disconnecting Yuuki.”_ Akira’s eyes narrowed. _“You knew this whole time—how much did you know? For how long?”_

 _“_ _That’s not something I can reliably say. It might have been there all along, or it might have just gradually surfaced like your own memories did,”_ Morgana stated. _“I only came here because I wanted you to know I finished what you requested… even though I’m still irked you didn’t listen. If you choose to stay here, you won’t have to go back to that world that made you suffer—either of them. You can be happy here with Mr. Monitor, and no one will ever try to hurt you. And if you had listened to me, you wouldn’t be running yourself into the ground trying to escape the inevitable, and you’d still be happy.”_

 _“_ _I wouldn’t be happy, knowing that there are people out there depending on me while I’m whiling the days away playing pretend!”_

Yuuki’s heart skipped a beat in shock; his blood ran cold. Was Akira saying what Yuuki thought he was saying?

 _“_ _I can’t just sit here and say everything’s alright just because I’m happy! People are suffering! Yuuki is suffering! And to get back to them—to help them, to be with him—I can’t afford to sit back and wait for someone else to solve my problems! Everyone was saying so—only I can help them fix this mess!”_

They glared at each other. Yuuki rubbed at his arm, reeling from the whiplash of thinking Akira was just playing house with him, that this was just a game to him; no, the truth was that Akira cared too much to sit back doing nothing, and wind up watching as everyone he knew and loved met their ruin. Even total strangers would weigh on his conscience—that was how he’d gotten arrested in the first place.

Akira was a good person. Better than Yuuki; better than most of Japan. He didn’t deserve to languish in his own mind.

Morgana broke the stalemate with a cat-like laugh. _“Looks like you’ve found your answer, then. I’d say I’m proud of you, but, well… No, let’s just leave it at that. I’ll be waiting for you in the place I prepared.”_

Akira was taken aback by how easily the cat-boy gave up the fight. He stood there stunned speechless as Morgana sauntered back out the door, tail swaying lazily. _“I found my answer?”_ he asked, slowly. _“What does that mean?”_

“It’s pretty obvious,” Yuuki said, hoping it would get through, even if he sounded hurt. “You’re going to go through with it, aren’t you? Disconnecting me to help everyone. That’s just the kind of person you are.”

 _“_ _Yuuki, no—”_ He whirled, eyes wide with fear. _“That’s—that’s not what I meant—”_

“I know what you meant,” Yuuki said. It felt insanely good to hold a proper conversation with the boy he’d gotten to know over two years. Everything up until now had felt unbalanced—one-sided, with Akira as the focal point. Yuuki decided he could wait a little longer—just a little—for it to be his turn. “And I know what you didn’t mean, too. You don’t know how much you’ve helped me just by being here. I fall asleep listening to your voice most of the time—I’ve got it recorded, you know. Just knowing there’s someone out there willing to help some nobody like me, though, that’s enough. I know you didn’t mean to sound like we were just playing at this, and it hurt when you said it. But then you said I was hurting, too, and you’re right. I am. But I’ve got friends here who’ll help me out while we wait for you. I can wait however long it takes, as long as they’re there for me. I can wait—so you can go do what you need to, Akira. Go save those people, and Goro, and give them all hell for causing all this mess in the first place. Okay?”

He took a deep, shuddering breath. Sobs threatened his lungs—he allowed himself one or two smothered into his blankets but no more. At the end of the week he would be graduating; he would be an official adult with a high school diploma and a college waiting for him. If he let high school follow him around like a stray dog nipping at his heels he’d never grow up, would he? Kamoshida—Kobayakawa—his parents—they’d be there in the back of his mind forever, but if he mired himself in self-pity it would be like letting them win, and he would be the loser for the rest of his life.

( _When did this happen?_ he thought. _When did I decide they couldn’t rule over me anymore?_

He didn’t really know. Likely it had just been building up, quietly and surely, over the past couple of years, years spent in general solitude with Akira by his side.)

 _“_ _Yuuki,”_ Akira said. A smile twitched at his lips. He seemed almost proud.

“Okay?” Yuuki pressed.

 _“_ _Okay,”_ Akira said. _“I swear. But—but not right now. I’d like a little more time with you, after tonight, if you’re still willing to go through with it.”_

“Go through with what?”

 _“_ _You forgot? And after I mustered up all my courage to ask? Do I have to say it again?”_

Yuuki was expecting anger—instead Akira smirked, playful and teasing, as if he’d expected it. _“You were pretty tired when I asked you, I think,”_ he went on. _“So maybe I should ask again, just to be sure: Yuuki, my monitor, the boy on the other side of the screen… Will you marry me?”_

“Ma—” Yuuki broke off, choking on his own spit. So that hadn’t been a dream, then. Akira had actually asked that—and Yuuki had answered— “Of course!”

He then clamped his mouth shut. He could feel the beginning of a headache coming on; too many differing emotions in such a short time, too much stress, too much blood rushing to his face. Despite how chilly the attic was, he was starting to sweat.

Akira smiled, a look so filled with love that if Yuuki were to die right then and there, he would die happy. _“No sleeping yet, okay?”_ Akira said, and brandished a card Yuuki had never seen before.

Morgana’s favor?

_“Not until we make it official.”_

“Official,” Yuuki whimpered as the screen went black. There were dozens of lewd jokes about the marriage bed in every country—was Akira really thinking—but they hadn’t even kissed, hadn’t even held hands—

He put his phone down—wherever Morgana’s favor was taking them, it was taking an awfully long time to load—disentangled himself from his blankets, and tottered down the stairs. He splashed water on his face in the bathroom, trying to will the shaking of his hands and the deep scarlet his face had turned away.

Akira was a gentleman. He had to believe that.

Akira was also as much of a virgin with these kinds of things as Yuuki was; it didn’t matter that he was an unabashed flirt, or that the smoldering look in his eyes made shivers run up and down Yuuki’s spine. There was nothing either of them could do from opposite sides of the screen except talk—

(He liked listening to Akira talk. Admitted it, even. There wasn’t much they could do, but Akira could tell grand, sweeping epics of every single act he wanted to do to Yuuki and there wouldn’t be a thing Yuuki could do to stop him. Worse, that needy part of himself would eat it all up and go running back for more.)

 _Akira,_ he thought, _is a_ gentleman.

He just had to keep believing that.

He made his way back up to the attic, knees quivering, heart hammering. The image on the screen made him sag with relief: a modest temple on a cliff overlooking the sea. The wards hanging on the _torii_ gate swayed in a sea breeze; the offeratory box squatted empty and forlorn. Morgana stood in front of it, hands on his hips, squinting against the salt in the air.

 _“_ _The lighthouse keeper went off to change,”_ he explained once Yuuki made his presence known. _“Be grateful—he’s been working on this ensemble for months. Insisted that it had to be perfect, even if he wasn’t sure what it was supposed to look like. I’m not even sure he knows how to put it on.”_

For months? Then—what Akira had been hiding, those handfuls of times Yuuki had sneaked a peek in at lunch at school—that had been for this?

 _“_ _I’ll admit, you’ve done well,”_ Morgana said, inclining his head, showing as much respect as a cat could. _“You’ve got him this far, and he’s likely to go even further, just on your memory. I won’t be needed here anymore—he’ll escape this place for sure, and my role as his mind guardian will come to an end, even if it hurts him to do so.”_

“Hurts him?” Yuuki asked, but just as Morgana was opening his mouth to no doubt tell him not to worry about it—or to tell him Morgana couldn’t hear him, even if Akira could—Akira rounded the corner, picking his way across the stones of the courtyard, frowning at every crack before he dared to put his foot down. There was a distinctive wooden clack every time he did, low and hollow, ringing out in the silence, but Yuuki’s attention was on his attire.

He didn’t know what he was expecting. A Western-style suit in black and red, maybe—a tuxedo, he thought they were called—but Akira was wearing a flowing white kimono with a red _hiyoku_ underneath. It trailed down to his toes, kept off the ground by his _geta_ , and the sleeves obscured most of his hands until just the tips of his fingers poked out from where they were folded across his stomach. The _obi_ was plain and white and tied with a red cord; his eyes were downcast—staring at the ground as he walked, likely afraid of tripping and falling—and shaded by an elaborate headdress Yuuki could remember seeing in movies but didn’t know the name of. It looked heavy.

It was painfully obvious: Akira was the bride.

No, no; Akira should be the groom. He didn’t have to do this—dress up like a woman, layers and all, down to the slight dusting of makeup on his face. He shouldn’t have to do this.

“Akira,” Yuuki said, wishing he could convey how deeply sorry he was that Akira felt the need to do this.

 _“_ _How do I look?”_ Akira asked, once he was in front of them both.

 _“_ _Gorgeous, just like you thought,”_ Morgana deadpanned. _“Was this really necessary? I think you broke Mr. Monitor over here.”_

Akira turned to him. _“Is it too much?”_

Yes, Yuuki wanted to say, but his throat refused to work. This demure-looking Akira—it was too much for him. Yuuki couldn’t tell if he was lucky or being drowned in pity.

Akira lifted one of his sleeves to examine it. _“I didn’t think you’d mind. I wanted to try wearing it, just once. Does it not suit me?”_

“Everything suits you,” Yuuki said. His voice cracked. “You look—”

He swallowed. Akira looked at him, expectant.

“Gorgeous,” he finished.

Akira broke into a grin so wide it reached his ears. _“All my hard work paid off, then. Morgana said it was strange, the first time he saw me testing it out—but really, how many chances do we get to look pretty? Everything’s so dull back home. This is—well, it’s different. It’s nice.”_

 _“_ _You’re rambling,”_ Morgana warned.

 _“_ _I’m explaining,”_ Akira said, _“that I wanted to wear this because I wanted to wear this. When I’m home I can go back to boring suits and ties and all those dull men’s kimono_ _in the same three colors_ _. Right now, I just want to look nice. For Yuuki, and for me.”_

 _“_ _Fine,”_ Morgana groaned. _“Let’s get this started, then.”_

“Akira,” Yuuki said. He didn’t understand the logic—wanting to look pretty wasn’t something any normal man wanted—but if it made Akira happy, Yuuki was fine with it. Akira shot him a glance, a smile hidden under his hands as he turned to face Morgana fully.

 _“_ _Uh, right,”_ the cat-boy started. _“I don’t know much about weddings. There’s a lot here that we’re missing, I think, but as long as your sentiments hold true it shouldn’t matter.”_

Akira’s shoulders shook in silent laughter.

 _“_ _Stop that! Uh, anyway, we are gathered here—wait, there’s only three of us—uh, anyway, we are gathered here so that you may be joined in holy matrimony, in spirit if not in body. Uh…”_

Yuuki couldn’t help but begin to chuckle, too, as Morgana patted down his pockets to pull out a handful of cue cards. Most of what was written was in Akira’s messy scrawl, and Morgana squinted and struggled to read it. He mumbled something along the lines of, _“within the view of God? What is this?”_ before devolving into grumbling.

After a few minutes glancing through his cue cards, he threw his hands up. _“Whatever! Let’s just skip to the good part!”_

“The good part?” Yuuki couldn’t help but ask.

Morgana cleared his throat. _“Do you, Mr. Monitor, take the lighthouse keeper as your bride, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, in good times and bad, until the universe ceases to sing?”_

“Uh, sure,” he said, unsure of that last bit. Wasn’t it supposed to be ‘death do you part?’

 _“_ _You’re supposed to say ‘I do,’”_ Akira whispered to him.

“Oh, I do,” he corrected, and picked the offered prompt for good measure.

Akira nodded. _“And I do, too,”_ he said, simply, before Morgana could even get the words out. _“For the rest of our time together and beyond, long after the song that sustains the universe ceases to sing, long after our bodies have grown old and died and returned to dust. My soul will always remember what you’ve done for me, Yuuki. Let it be known that I, Akira Kurusu, will never forget._

_“And even if we discover we aren’t the right people for each other—even if we realize that we simply aren’t suited for each other—I won’t forget, then, either. Even if we grow sick of each other, and that sickness turns to hatred, I won’t forget. There will always be a place for us at each other’s side, even if we cease to be connected. Please, remember that.”_

Morgana pouted. _“What was the point of those cards if you were just going to write your own vow?”_

 _“_ _I thought you were actually going to read them,”_ Akira said, _“and give Yuuki and I a nice, proper wedding. Although, I’ve never been to a traditional Japanese wedding, so I don’t know what the vows are supposed to be like…”_

Yuuki said, “It’s just your nature. Tradition doesn’t suit you.”

A boy in bridal kimono. Past-Akira defying everyone time and again to fight for his own beliefs; Ren Amamiya doing the right thing, no matter how much trouble it got him into.

 _“_ _Yuuki.”_ He was blushing, hands back in front of his face to hide it like a schoolgirl.

 _“_ _What? What did he say?”_ Morgana demanded.

 _“_ _He said, ‘Tradition isn’t in your nature,’”_ Akira told him with a chuckle. _“And he’s right; it’s not. Look at me. Look at all of us and where we are. Nothing about this is traditional, but I love it anyway.”_

 _“_ _I know it’s not traditional! You can’t even kiss! Where’s the fun in that?”_

 _“_ _We can do plenty of kissing once we’re face-to-face. You won’t even have to watch.”_

Yuuki tried to imagine kissing Akira—alone in their shared apartment, or in front of his friends—and the thought made the blood rush to his head all over again. He’d never kissed anyone before. Surely Akira wouldn’t notice?

Morgana made a—disappointed? Relieved?—groan, and stomped his feet. _“Good!”_ he cried. _“I don’t want to watch anyway!”_

Akira’s only answer was to laugh.

 

* * *

 

 

Morgana left them shortly after that, saying that his store needed to be tidied up. He’d been neglecting it to work on Akira’s favor—and they had better be grateful!

Which left them both standing at the temple, Yuuki’s monitor as immobile as ever, and Akira took the screen in his hands as if it were Yuuki’s face and brought his forehead to the glass. His headdress got there before he did, so he carefully unpinned it and set on the offeratory box.

Akira’s face was all shadows and dim light that close to the screen. _“Yuuki,”_ he said softly, as if it were a prayer. _“I don’t think you know how happy I am right now.”_

“I think I do,” Yuuki said, eyeing Akira’s slight smile and the way his eyes crinkled at the edges. It was the kind of happiness that lit him from within—it almost made him glow. “Did you—did you mean that? When you said even if we’re not meant for each other?”

 _“_ _Of course. I’m not the type of person to force someone to stay in a relationship with me if they don’t want to. I do want to try being together—even if it’s only for a little while. It doesn’t have to be forever. I just wanted you to know that even if we aren’t meant to be, you’ll always be special to me.”_

“Akira,” Yuuki said, though his voice shook. Akira was considering Yuuki more than himself—like always. Maybe he was picking up more of what Yuuki was going through than he thought.

 _“_ _Yuuki,”_ Akira said back. Then he asked: _“Did you like my new name? I thought it only appropriate, all things considered. I’m not this ‘Ion’ person—never have been, never will be—and I like the one you call me more, honestly, although before I could only ever get a glimpse of what you meant. I’m glad I was right. Although there’s no doubt in my mind that all the friends I’ve made here are going to take it hard… but I’m sure they’ll get used to it.”_

“I like it,” Yuuki said. “Akira Kurusu. Dawn breaking over the horizon—it suits you.”

Akira flashed him a satisfied grin. _“Shame we can’t even exchange rings,”_ he said. _“I’d take that over kisses. Rings are real, you know?”_

“Proof,” Yuuki guessed, “that this isn’t just a dream.”

 _“_ _Yeah, that. Proof.”_

“I’ll buy us some.”

 _“_ _Really?”_

“Really,” Yuuki said. “Though they won’t be great or fancy. I don’t think I can even afford silver ones. But they’ll be real, and they’ll be waiting for you. We can—there’s this guy I know who grew up super traditional”—if Yusuke’s upbringing could be described as super traditional, or if he knew anything about weddings at all—“he can help us put together a little ceremony. Just us. We can exchange vows. You can wear the kimono again, if you want.”

 _“_ _And exchange rings after?”_

Yuuki nodded so hard the blanket on his head fell off, then remembered that Akira couldn’t actually see him. “Yeah.”

 _“_ _And kiss?”_

“Um, maybe a simple one?”

 _“_ _Anything for you,”_ Akira said. _“Anything. After all this—if a simple kiss is what you want at our real-life wedding, I’ll give it to you. I’ll give you a dozen—no, hundreds. Promise.”_

“Promise,” Yuuki said.

 _“_ _No, I meant—you know what I meant,”_ Akira laughed. The sound made Yuuki laugh—again, for at least the third or fourth time in an hour. It felt good, laughing over silly things like this, with someone who made his heart feel fit to bursting.

“And I mean it too,” Yuuki said, through giggles. “A dozen kisses. Hundreds. Until you get sick of them.”

Even if they wound up meaning nothing. Even if Yuuki found someone else—girl, boy, cyborg, dog, whatever—he wanted to kiss more. He doubted it, though; Akira was the only one who made his heart soar like this. Akira was the only one who made him want to be better.

 _“_ _Yuuki, how could I ever get sick of your kisses?”_

“Maybe I’m bad at them.”

 _“_ _You kiss someone a hundred times, you’re going to get better. You’ll give great kisses by the time I’m through with you. You’ll—you’ll be the champion of kisses.”_

Yuuki imagined himself like a boxer, standing in the middle of a ring, arm raised high by a referee, lips bruised and puffy. The championship belt would be a pair of gaudy, diamond-studded gold lips that sparkled so brightly they threatened to blind children. It made him laugh even harder. “Please teach me, coach,” he said, in between laughs.

(For once, he wasn’t thinking of Kamoshida when he said ‘coach.’)

 _“_ _Gladly,”_ said Akira.

 

* * *

 

 

Yuuki fell asleep upright with his phone in his hands, crouched on the couch like Futaba usually sat, his toes dangling over the seat. At some point Akira must have sent them back home, because when his alarm blared he was greeted with Akira’s sleeping face, half-buried into a pillow made of code. He grumbled at his dreams.

Yuuki didn’t want to wake him. He exited the app as quickly as he could, shut off his alarm, and stared. It took him a few minutes to realize that last night had actually happened—and that he really needed to pee.

It took him a few seconds of shuffling around in his blankets to realize he wasn’t going to be using the bathroom anytime soon—not if the cafe was open, and not if Mr. Sakura was downstairs. His boner was nestled comfortably between his thighs, and any movement sent waves of pleasure streaking down his spine—but he wouldn’t do anything about it. Not in Leblanc, not after all of Mr. Sakura’s charity, not after he’d learned—months and months ago—that Futaba used to have the place bugged, and no one was sure whether she’d gotten rid of everything.

He settled in with his phone instead, searching for cheap wedding rings, then cheap rings when the wedding rings consistently exceeded his current budget. Then he started looking at apartments, avoiding the urge to fidget as his toes began to go numb. He wasn’t sure where Akira would like to live—with him, close to the college Yuuki would go to, or closer to his folks—but bookmarked the cheapest, least run-down places he could find.

By the time he was done worrying over whether they would burn one place down trying to cook dinner or another by having the heat too high, his erection was gone and his bladder fit to burst.

He still hobbled his way down the stairs, feet unsure as the blood rushed back into them. He still took his time washing his hands and face and brushing his teeth. Staring at himself in the mirror, he didn’t look much different from two years ago—but there was a newfound spark in his eye that wasn’t there before, and he could at least look at himself without cringing over one old bruise or another playing the phantom across his face. The mark from his mother’s slap was gone, and even though the skin was still tender it wasn’t swollen.

For once, he thought he would be okay—but he couldn’t help but revisit last night, the wedding, Akira in a bridal gown, the impromptu vows at a temple by the shore…

And realized that after all that Akira had said last night, he hadn’t said ‘I love you.’ Somehow that hurt more than his mother’s slap and Kamoshida’s punches combined—but maybe he was being cautious, and refraining for Yuuki’s sake. Maybe he’d picked up, at some point or another, Yuuki’s doubts over whether this was love or not. Yuuki certainly didn’t know love, just attraction, and most of that was what he’d picked up watching everyone else.

Risette was sexy with her full lips, her long legs, her huge rack. Kanamin was cute with her innocent charm and bubbly personality—the breasts helped her case, too. Boys were supposed to like girls with big boobs and butts, and the idol industry made it no secret that every idol was meant to be for her fans—every sultry smile, every hooded gaze, and every sly wink was just another way to get loners like Yuuki thinking someone cared about him. Kanamin was known to hug her fans at meet-and-greets, sometimes, if she recognized them and liked them enough.

But Yuuki didn’t want that. Yuuki wanted deep, rich voices in his ear, and to feel the hard lines of muscles under his fingers through even simple actions like hugs. Idols, dancers and singers that they were, surely covered in layers of muscle through months and years of training, just couldn’t give him that. Yuuki wanted to feel safe in someone else’s arms the way he felt under piles of blankets, and idols couldn’t give him that.

A knock on the door startled him out of his reverie. “You okay in there?” Mr. Sakura asked.

“Y-yeah,” he said. “Just—uh, give me a minute?”

“Sure thing.”

And he washed his face again and nearly scrubbed it raw with his handkerchief. He could blame the redness on that—but Mr. Sakura only raised a brow when he came out of the bathroom, asked if he wanted breakfast, and then after serving it asked if he could help out that night.

“Sure,” Yuuki said. The breakfast curry today was slightly different from yesterday’s—hardboiled eggs inside, instead of clumps of scrambled—but it still tasted fine, and judging from the small pot bubbling away on the stove next to the bigger dinner pot gave Yuuki the impression other people thought so, too.

“Great,” said Mr. Sakura. “Wash that plate when you’re done for me, yeah?”

He did. Mr. Sakura, like yesterday, didn’t stare over his shoulder to make sure he was doing it right, and, like yesterday, gave him a brief farewell when Yuuki left for school.

… Well, he could go ring shopping another time.

 

* * *

 

 

Except the days flew by too quickly for Yuuki to even consider lazing about in a mall. Mr. Sakura, after that first day, asked him for help every night, and since Yuuki wasn’t sure what time he was expected, just showed up right after school let out and often stayed in the cafe until closing. Whenever there was a lull in the customers he sat down at the bar and picked through his homework, still as dull and dry as ever. Why finals had to be two weeks ago was beyond him—but as it was, he was barely managing to get through composition and literature, much less math, and he knew that the added stress of finals would have sent him over an edge.

He thought he knew what kind. His feet on concrete and yawning, empty air in front—

He drew a sharp breath, a hiss through his teeth, and went back to his work. Mr. Sakura glanced at him for a while but said nothing.

It was only when the news segment was winding down that Mr. Sakura said, “Your graduation’s the day after tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah,” Yuuki said. He resisted the urge to throw his pencil as hard as he could at the floor, and simply let it flop out of his hands.

“Heard from your folks?”

He shook his head. “Not yet.”

Mr. Sakura let out a grunt. It might have been a hum—just a noise, a thoughtful one. He turned back to the TV. “Take tomorrow night off. Have some fun. When I said help out, I didn’t mean for six hours straight, you know.”

“Sorry,” slipped out before he knew it, but Mr. Sakura was shaking his head, this time.

“My fault, not yours,” he said. “Go on up. I don’t think we’ll be getting anymore customers tonight.”

“Are—yeah, okay,” Yuuki said. Mr. Sakura knew his clientele well. He had at least a dozen regulars, and all of them had come and gone by then. New customers would just have to wait until tomorrow, when the shop opened back up.

So Yuuki packed up his things and tossed his schoolbag in the corner, tugging his wallet out to count bills and change. Little things over the week had added up—new lead for his pencil, a pack of cheap toothbrushes, bread from the school store for lunch every day—and he didn’t have much left.

But he promised Akira rings.

When school let out the next day, it was only with a mild feeling of nausea that he made himself brave the underground mall in Shibuya. He could take the crowds, he thought, if it was for Akira. He could take the staring as he perused the jewelry on display in one store or the women’s accessories section of another, if it was for Akira.

The problem quickly became that nothing suited him and Akira both. A stylish black ring with decals of feathers etched on the side would be perfect for Akira, but Yuuki couldn’t see himself wearing it. A simple aluminum band looked far too cheap, like he’d given as little thought to it as possible. Women’s jewelry was too flashy and too studded with gemstones, fake or not, for Yuuki to even dare to imagine Akira wearing one.

He was back at the men’s jewelry, staring into the case again, wondering if getting two separate rings would upset Akira or not, when an arm clamped around his shoulders. Ryuji, reflected in the glass, grinned at him. “Whatcha lookin’ at?”

“Rings,” Yuuki told him.

“Any reason why?” Ryuji prodded.

“Don’t laugh,” Yuuki murmured under his breath. Ryuji pulled him in closer until their heads were practically touching, his arm a leaden but warm and welcome weight dragging Yuuki down closer to the case, and bade him go on with another wide grin.

“We’re buds, ain’t we? I won’t laugh, man.”

He took a deep breath, smelled sweat and Ryuji’s sandalwood deodorant, sharp in his nose. “You know how in the app, Akira and I are dating?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, um, last night we got married, and—”

Ryuji cut him off with a shout, and likely drew the attention of everyone in a half-mile radius, underground or above. His arm went from comforting weight to chokehold. “For real?! Congrats, man! You shoulda told us!”

Yuuki tapped on his arm, ineffectually at first, as he felt his airway closing. Ryuji was giving him a noogie—a salesman was coming over—people were _staring_ —

“Can I help you with anything, gentlemen?” said the salesperson, in a tone of voice that said he had to, rather than wanting to. Most likely he wanted to kick them out as soon as possible—after they made a purchase, probably.

“Yeah, man!” Ryuji crowed—but had the decency to lower his tone as he continued, “My bud here wants to get engaged. His SO ain’t one for the flashy stuff, though. You got anything you recommend?”

The salesman’s lips pursed. “I would think you should pay a visit to a proper jeweler.”

Ryuji raised a brow at that. “You ain’t a proper jeweler?”

“We carry accessories and jewelry suited for men,” the salesman said, “which isn’t typically the kind of thing women enjoy.”

He looked down his nose at them. Ryuji released Yuuki only to clench his fists and glare straight back. “You got a problem?”

The salesman sniffed, his nostrils flaring, and Yuuki began to think that out of all the salesmen in the store, they had to get the one who was homophobic. Naturally, his only day off this week, his only chance before graduation to buy a pair of rings before college swallowed him whole—naturally he would be side-eyed and tossed out.

Thoughts of being escorted out by some beefy security guy were dashed when a second salesman approached them. “Is there a problem?”

“Yeah, there’s a problem,” Ryuji growled out. “My bud here wants to buy some rings, but this prick don’t like that.”

“His friend is considering engagement to his ‘significant other,’” the first salesman said, voice dripping with disdain. “I only told them they should visit a proper jeweler, where there are proper engagement rings.”

But the second salesman didn’t seem so off-put; in fact, he seemed ecstatic. “Engaged? That’s wonderful! But, ah, proper engagement rings all look the same, don’t they? No wonder you came here.”

The first salesman scowled; Ryuji shot him a shark-toothed grin, then hooked his arm back around Yuuki’s shoulders. “Gotta get something special, right?”

“Yeah,” Yuuki said. “I—uh, I thought about getting separate ones, but I wanted it to be a set…”

“Of course! Let me show you—we have a few pieces that are part of a larger set, and others that are quite similar, although I’m afraid we don’t quite carry pairs, you see…”

He led them over to a case Yuuki had glanced at on his trips around the store. The first salesman stood there glaring, lips pursed and nose wrinkled as if a rotten odor had passed him by, before smoothing out his jacket and walking to the other side of the store.

The second salesman unlocked the case and slid the tray on top. There were rings of all colors, studded with gems and not, etched with various designs or plain bands. Yuuki found himself staring at the same jet-black ring with feathers along the sides that he saw earlier as the second salesman went on describing each one.

It would suit Akira, and so well, too.

…But the price tag had a few too many zeroes on it. Yuuki had chump change; why didn’t he just bother with plain aluminum rings from Junes?

“Ryuji,” he said softly, “I can’t afford any of these.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ryuji said. “I got your back.”

“What? No!” He squirmed out of Ryuji’s hold. “I—I promised him I’d buy the rings. We agreed that they didn’t have to be fancy, and…”

He trailed off, searching for a way to explain to an eager salesman that he didn’t have the money for any of these without getting sneered at again.

“Futaba’s been paying me pretty well to be her guinea pig for new games and shit,” Ryuji said, “and Mom don’t want me spending anything I earn on her. I got enough saved up for college and then some—Futaba makes some pretty sweet games, you know? Anyway, I just don’t like the thought of sitting on all this extra cash.”

“Ryuji!” What a stupid thing to say—there was a salesman right in front of them, showing off goods, what did he think was going to happen?

“Akira makes you happy, yeah?” Ryuji asked, throwing him off.

“Well.” Yuuki glanced at the salesman. He had a look on his face that Yuuki didn’t want to call adoring—it looked a bit too sad for that—but he certainly didn’t seem to mind the conversation. “Yeah.”

“And you want something that’ll show him he makes you happy, too, right?”

Another glance at the salesman. “Yeah.”

“Then I hate to tell you this, but Akira’s allergic to aluminum jewelry,” Ryuji said. “All that cheap stuff’ll do is make him swell up and give him a rash. He’ll take it, yeah, but he’s gonna wind up miserable.”

“How do you know that?”

Now Ryuji was glancing at the salesman, who now looked mildly horrified. “I’ll tell you later. So, you gonna let me help you out or not?”

Yuuki bit his lip. “This is more than just a little favor.”

A shrug. “Then pay me back. Don’t gotta be now. ‘Sides, what kinda friend would I be if I watched you stress over it any more?”

A pat on his back; a sunny grin aimed his way. It did next to nothing to assuage the guilt starting to eat at Yuuki’s heart: one the one hand, Akira could have something nice, something he wasn’t allergic to; on the other, Ryuji would be paying for it, as if he were the one virtual-married to the boy on the other side of the screen, and not Yuuki.

Yuuki took too long to answer; the grin faltered. “And it’s, uh, the least I can do for you guys, after, y’know…”

Did he?

Yes, he did. The time Ryuji took his phone—but Yuuki had forgiven him for that ages ago, hadn’t he? Was it still eating away at him?

Apparently it was. Ryuji was staring at the rings the same way he once looked at Yuuki, with frustration in his furrowed brow and the downturn of his lips. His whole body shrank like a compressed coil, waiting to spring at the slightest provocation. He crossed his arms over his chest, as if to hide how tense they were.

And the salesman was still there, glancing between the two of them as if he was trying to decide whether to quit the whole pitch or let them talk it out.

“I—I, uh,” Yuuki said, and pointed to the feather-etched ring, “I think this one wold suit him best, honestly.”

“You think so?” Ryuji eyed it. “Kinda flashy, ain’t it?”

“Flashy is practically his middle name. But it’s, uh, not mine.”

Ryuji thought that over for a few seconds. The salesman was still smiling, but was it Yuuki’s imagination, or was it wavering at the edges? “So you think it’d look good on him, but a matching one wouldn’t suit ya?”

“Yeah,” Yuuki admitted.

Ryuji pointed at it. “You got another one of these?” he asked the salesman. “In a different color, maybe?”

“Well, these are from the same line as that one is,” the salesman answered, pointing at a set of rings nearby. Yuuki could see designs on these, too, but they were subtle, near-indistinct from the metal. He thought he saw a gemstone or two but couldn’t tell without getting closer—but the salesman waved him over until the three of them were bent over the tray. “They’re far more muted than that one is, but look at it in the light…”

He held up the black feather-etched ring. Simple black zirconium, with the designs in silver, yet each one so small it must have taken a needle to produce each line. He gulped when the salesman pointed out the miniature black diamond on the band, almost invisible to the naked eye.

Trust him to pick out the most costly ring in the whole store for Akira.

Now the salesman was holding up the other rings. The same overall designs on each one, but cast in different metals and with different designs on the sides. He had no idea there were so many different kinds, and the price tags rose and dipped accordingly, even though in small increments.

His head swam. There was no way he could accept Ryuji paying for both rings—maybe he could just get help with Akira’s, and buy his own later; but if he waited, surely the line would sell out, and who knew if the shop would get anymore in?

“Pretty sweet,” Ryuji said with a crooked grin as he looked some of the rings over. “See any you like?”

Of course he did. A band of yellow gold, with shimmering, pearlescent designs of the phases of the moon outlined across it. It was almost the exact opposite of the one he wanted to get Akira, and even if he said otherwise, Akira would love it.

Ryuji saw him eyeing it. “Then, these two,” he told the salesman, pointing.

“Of course,” the salesman said with a smile as Yuuki spluttered. He set about putting them into boxes—fancy, deep blue velvet ones that had the butterflies in Yuuki’s stomach whirling—and walked them over to the register. “How will you be paying?”

“Ah, card,” Ryuji said.

Yuuki latched onto his arm. “You really don’t need to do this,” he hissed. “They’re way too expensive!”

“So pay me back in ramen,” Ryuji said. He handed over his card, swiped Yuuki into a headlock, and shook him a bit, like he was trying to get Yuuki’s pieces back into place. “I can wait. We can do installments, yeah? ‘Sides, don’t he deserve something nice after all the shit he’s been through?”

Yuuki felt like they’d just had this conversation. Ryuji turned to sign for the rings—the salesman was talking them both through the return policy, although Yuuki wasn’t paying attention—and Yuuki was tearing up, in a jewelry store in Shibuya with what might be dozens of his classmates around. He hadn’t seen any Shujin uniforms walking in, but that didn’t mean they weren’t in casual clothes. He’d spent far too much time wandering through stores.

God, he hoped he wouldn’t walk into homeroom tomorrow to everyone whispering about him. He didn’t think he could take it.

“Hey, Yuuki, man,” Ryuji said.

“Yeah?”

The crinkle of paper. The salesman had bagged the absurdly expensive rings and was holding it out to Yuuki, despite Ryuji being the one buying the things. Yuuki thought he could recognize the expression on the man’s face—a soft understanding, from one kindred soul to another—and he reached for the bag.

“I hope everything works out,” the salesman said, and for once Yuuki wished he was wearing a nametag. He wanted to thank him—for putting up with a couple of teenagers, for not asking too many questions, for not immediately turning them away at the mere mention that Yuuki was gay.

The only thing that found its way out of his mouth, out of all the things he wanted to say, was, “I hope so, too.”

“Thanks, man,” Ryuji said, and with a friendly wave—one the salesman returned—tugged Yuuki out of the store. They stopped by a bunch of cardboard boxes tucked into a corner so Yuuki could put the purchase in his schoolbag, receipt curled over the top of the boxes.

“You alright?” Ryuji dared to ask.

“No,” Yuuki said. If he clutched his bag too hard, he could hear the paper crinkling. “You didn’t need to do that.”

“And I said I wanted to,” Ryuji shot back.

“But you didn’t _need_ to,” Yuuki protested. “What happened back then—that was my fault. Not yours. I—I got stuck up in my own head and ignored you guys, and then I said all that shit, and then I—”

He cut himself off, too embarrassed to say it.

“Yeah, you did,” Ryuji said, “but I drove you to it. Some of it, anyway. ‘N I thought, later, that maybe you were right: I was actin’ like Kamoshida, just takin’ what I wanted when I wanted it, however I could.” He shook his head, scowled, and glared at some pedestrians passing by. A couple of women noticed and scurried off, heads ducked close together. “I was tryin’ to help, but you wouldn’t let me, ‘n that pissed me off. Thought I had to be right—that only guys with bad shit to hide acted all dodgy like you did—that I barely even thought about how you’d take it. Didn’t even think to really hear your side of it. So it’s my bad.”

Then he asked: “Kamoshida never did nothin’ like… that, right? To you?”

“No,” Yuuki said. “Thought I told you he just stared a lot. I thought he was sizing us up, you know, to see who was making the most progress or who was wearing down. I don’t want to think he’d do something like that to all of us.”

“You sure?”

Yuuki never liked thinking about Kamoshida. The way he loomed like a mountain over Yuuki, curled up on the floor or pinned against a wall—the way his face looked swarmed with shadows, the smell of his sweat filling the PE faculty room, the smirk as he stared down at his handiwork. Yuuki could imagine it being anyone on that floor at Kamoshida’s mercy—could imagine him doing anything he pleased, and the world outside left none the wiser—but he only remembered hits. His face, his stomach, his back—bruises coating his arms from blocked balls spiked at him, bruises covering his legs from too many dives or falls to the court floor. Kamoshida liked to hit.

That was what he told Ryuji: Kamoshida liked to hit. Liked to feel superior, liked to watch others crawl on the ground and beg him to stop, or for mercy, or for anything. But he never touched the guys—almost like he didn’t dare to—just the girls, but Yuuki didn’t know whether Suzui was the first or last.

Ryuji nodded. He said something about reading up on the trial again. “I’m just, y’know, makin’ sure, man,” he finished. “I mean, that was the first time I ever saw you do anything like that, and I got to wonderin’…”

“Mom said the same thing,” Yuuki told him. He didn’t want to dwell on that. “Are you worried it won’t work out?”

“Do you know it will?”

“I don’t. Neither does Akira. But we’re going to try, and even if it doesn’t, hopefully we’ll come out better for it.” There were too many people out now; how late had it gotten? What time was Mr. Sakura closing the shop? “I wanna say it’s just him,” he confided. Ryuji leaned in closer; the noise was rising gradually, too. “I want to say he’s the only one who makes me feel like this, but it’s not entirely true. Maybe I just like people who give me attention.”

“Like ‘taba?”

Yuuki grimaced. Just the thought of being married to someone like Futaba—someone who thought digging up bank records or search histories and posting them online was revenge, someone who didn’t think twice about ordering her friends to steal shit—made his lip curl. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a good friend, and it wasn’t that her brains outdid her brawn, but…

Ryuji laughed a bit at the look on his face. “Then, how about Suzui? Or Takamaki? She’s modeling for real now, you know.”

He didn’t know what Suzui looked like at her best. The letters they sent each other on occasion made her seem kind, and gentle, and scarred—almost like Akira.

No, exactly like Akira. If Suzui was the one on the other side of the screen, would Yuuki have fallen for her?

He tried to imagine that. Suzui at the Valentine’s Cafe, or on the beach, or just cooking at the stove, talking softly in his ear. Humming along to songs she couldn’t remember the words to, writing silly little picture books and reading them to him when he couldn’t get to sleep, showing off her latest craft with pride no matter how badly it turned out.

It would be the same, except… it wouldn’t. All the times Akira thanked him for sticking around, all the times he mumbled Yuuki’s name in his sleep, all the times he asked Yuuki if there was anything he’d like to see or to go. All the times Akira jumped up with a corny salute when Yuuki told him to go gathering, or to make something or other, or even to change into an outfit…

Would Suzui have done that? Would she have done that for the person helping her?

And, if Akira was doing it…

“You think he feels he owes me somehow,” Yuuki said.

“Whaddaya mean?”

“If it were Suzui—or Futaba—or, or somebody else—on the other side, you think they’d feel like they owed me for helping them. Is that it?”

Ryuji flushed. He turned to stare at the traffic coming out of the mall. “Well, kinda. Would be hard not to, I think.”

“Well, if it were Suzui, or Futaba, I’d turn them down.”

“But why?”

Yuuki clutched his bag tighter. The paper inside crinkled; he imagined crushing the velvet boxes inside, entirely on accident. He blinked back tears of frustration. It seemed, as always, that he was ready to cry. “Why do I have to justify myself? It’d be the same, but it wouldn’t, because I’m gay and they wouldn’t deserve to pine after someone like me. We’d be friends, but that’s all.”

They’d also have all the desperate anime fans going after them in droves. They wouldn’t want for help the way Akira had, with his plain looks and his messy hair, his only redeeming feature the spark dancing in his eyes.

(Yuuki didn’t tell Ryuji this: he’d certainly give it a try. But he imagined it going nowhere fast, leading up to nothing at all except disappointment. He’d be happy making the girls happy, but wouldn’t want for anything more.)

Ryuji thought on that for a while. Yuuki ran his hands over the fabric of his schoolbag and suppressed the urge to run away. The ex-track star was thinking far too hard for it to be a question with a simple answer; Yuuki could practically hear the gears grinding in his head.

Finally, Ryuji spoke. His voice wasn’t soft, as it would be if he really didn’t want to be heard, but seemed more subdued than usual. Like he was asking a question he didn’t want to. “But how do you know?” he asked.

 _Oh_ , Yuuki thought with a blink of surprise.

“How do you know you like guys if you’ve never—y’know…” He scuffed his shoe, flush returning in full.

“How do you know you like girls if you’ve never been with one?” Yuuki shot back. Ryuji flinched; good. Let him squirm a bit. The girls may have admired him when the track team was a thing, but he’d never started anything, never gone after any of them in pursuit of training.

But maybe he’d been too harsh. That first salesman’s glare—his mother’s screeches, her handprint stinging his cheek—maybe he was too quick to go on the defensive. He softened his tone. “It’s just—that’s just the way I am. That’s all. Nobody made me turn out this way. Kamoshida never did anything to make me think like this.”

He waited for a while, letting Ryuji process it all. But long after he thought he’d given the other enough time, Ryuji stayed quiet. Yuuki huffed. He tried for a joke—but as soon as it left his mouth he knew his tone was wrong. He sounded angry, probably because he was. “Don’t tell me you’re worried I’m gonna hit on you or something.”

Ryuji flinched again and spun around to face him, shock and fear warring in his eyes.

Yuuki didn’t want to look at that. He turned to the stacks of boxes and tried, in vain, to read the faded logos on the sides. “You’re my friend,” he said. “You think I’d—do you really think I’d ruin that with unwanted advances? You think I’d push myself on you, just in case you liked me back like that?”

“No,” Ryuji said, softly enough that it made Yuuki think he was wishing he could sink into the floor. “No, I don’t. I’m the one who chased you down, ‘member? I’m the one who showed up at your door all pissed ‘cause you were ignoring me.”

“And everyone else,” Yuuki said.

“And everyone else,” Ryuji agreed. “They were content to stop botherin’ ya if that’s what ya wanted, but I told ‘em no, we had to find out what was goin’ on. And it turned out it was Akira. And I felt like an ass after, thinkin’ I mighta ruined somethin’ that made you so freakin’ happy you were willin’ to forget the rest of the world. Guess I was just jealous.”

“Jealous?”

“Yeah, jealous,” he said. “Never thought there’d be somethin’ or someone you liked that much. I thought it mighta been a girl, so when I saw ‘im on the screen, it kinda. Well, y’know. Threw me for a loop. I didn’t know what to think, ‘cept that maybe I wasn’t good enough.”

“Good enough for what?”

Ryuji shrugged. “I’ve been tryin’ to figure that out. Good enough to make ya happy? Good enough to be worth hangin’ around? I dunno. The more I think about it, the less I know.”

“So—just to make it clear for us both—you _don’t_ want to kiss me,” Yuuki said.

Ryuji made a face.

“And you _don’t_ want to hold my hand,” Yuuki continued.

Ryuji shook his head, not unlike a dog shaking off water. The dogtags on his necklace underneath his shirt clinked together through the force of it.

“And you don’t want to—” He couldn’t help the smile growing on his face, or the laughter bubbling up his throat.

“No! No more, man, please!” Ryuji groaned. “I don’t wanna do any of that stuff. That’s for you and Akira. Me n’ you, we’re friends. Best friends. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said; then something clicked. “Wait. Best friends? With me?”

“I told you man, Yusuke’s art-sexual,” Ryuji said, with his own crooked grin. “He thinks everything’s pretty, even weird shit like those boxes. I can’t follow him half the time. But you, man—you like Risette and Kanamin Kitchen, even if ya don’t think any of ‘em are hot the way I do. I can talk normal shit with ya. Ain’t that what besties do?”

“With me, though?” Yuuki pressed. “Not Futaba?”

Ryuji’s face fell. It was strange, as it always was, to see how many emotions made their way onto his face in such a short time. “We’re friends, yeah, but she’s also half my boss. Or somethin’. ‘N I can’t really talk guy stuff with her, you feel me? ‘Sides, she’s kinda out there, too. Like Yusuke is.”

Yuuki thought about that first meeting in Leblanc, where she’d ignored everyone until her show was over, even though she could have paused it. He thought about the way she would run on manic energy for weeks at a time and then crash and do nothing but sleep for days—sometimes he and Ryuji wound up in Leblanc’s attic by themselves during those days, and Ryuji had always been happy to see him, even if he didn’t have a schedule Ryuji could set his watch to. He’d thought Ryuji was happy to see anyone—it could have been Yusuke coming up those stairs, after all—but they’d wind up talking about music or sports or school, more often than not.

Was that what best friends did? Just… talk?

Ryuji was staring at him. “You,” he said, firmly, and did something weird where his arm jerked like he wanted to sling it across Yuuki’s shoulders, “are way more normal than those two. You get what I talk about—even when I talk about girls. So, yeah, of course you’re my best friend. Unless ya don’t wanna be?”

“I do,” Yuuki said. For a moment, he thought of the wedding—the notion of trading best friend rings was right on the tip of his tongue, but Ryuji was giving him another crooked grin like he got the joke without it even having to be said.

Maybe he was just relieved, to finally have that all off his chest and out in the open. Finally the air was clear between them—this time for good, Yuuki thought.

“Cool,” Ryuji said, and finally slung that arm over his shoulders. “So, the usual place tomorrow?”

Yuuki laughed. “Where else would I be?”

“At home with your folks, celebrating you graduating. They can’t—they can’t both be stuck-up assholes like that guy,” he tossed his head in the general direction of the underground mall and the men’s jewelry store and the snobby salesman. “Uh, can they?”

“I don’t know,” Yuuki said. It had been almost a week, and he hadn’t heard anything at all. “Maybe Mom will calm down about it. Maybe she’ll just ignore it like she does everything else that bothers her. I don’t know.”

“Well, if she don’t,” Ryuji started, but Yuuki cut him off.

“I know,” he said, and couldn’t help the smile on his face. “I’ve got you guys. If—if I really can’t go back, if they really want to cut me off—I’ve got you guys. And Akira. I’ll survive.”

“You better.” Ryuji shook him once. The cold that replaced his arm made Yuuki shiver; the serious look in Ryuji’s eyes was hard to match, but he tried.

He tried.

Ryuji parted ways with him there—he used a different line to get home from Shibuya—and Yuuki made his way back to Leblanc, clutching his schoolbag and taking heart in the crinkling of paper inside, yet somehow too afraid to do anything else, as if just checking to see if the boxes were still there would make them vanish—or worse, get stolen.

But he endured. Boss sent him upstairs with a plate of curry and the promise of a graduation party tomorrow; Akira gushed over the rings when Yuuki told him he’d bought them like he promised, then pouted when Yuuki refused to even describe them.

 _“_ _How will I know it’s you when I find my way back?”_ Akira asked.

“You’ll know,” Yuuki said. He had no idea where his sudden surge of confidence came from. “You’ll know because we’re connected.”

 _“_ _We’re connected,”_ Akira repeated. He thought about it for a few minutes; Yuuki took the time to change out of his uniform and ensconce himself in blankets.

The burgeoning smile on Akira’s face told Yuuki everything he needed to know.

“We’re connected,” they both said, together.


	8. Graduation Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 has been edited. My thanks to Ivyvory for that; hopefully it reads a bit better, now. If there's anything else that needs work, please let me know.

 

The sun peeked out from behind cloud cover; a warm spring breeze picked up loose flower petals from their precarious perches on branches and carried them off to be scattered anywhere it pleased, one such place being Yuuki’s hair as he squinted against the sudden glare.

“You came,” he said, and blamed the sun on the tears forming in his eyes.

“Of course I did,” said Hirotaka. “You _are_ my son. Let me get a picture, Yuuki.”

“I—yeah, okay.”

If he looked silly, squinting to keep his tears from falling and clutching his diploma case like a lifeline, Hirotaka didn’t say. He took his picture and enveloped his son in what had to be the warmest hug Yuuki had ever experienced. It was the kind of thing he fantasized receiving from Akira, but subtly different—his father was broader in the shoulders, and his bit of stubble scraped Yuuki’s cheek, and he didn’t smell at all like curry spices or coffee, the way Yuuki imagined Akira did. But he was here, gripping Yuuki like one hug was going to make the past three years disappear into a void to never return, telling him he was proud, and sorry, and that there would never be a way for him to make everything right.

“It doesn’t need to be,” Yuuki said. “You just need to be here. Please, Dad.”

The tears came out. Yuuki cried—and his father cried, too, drawing the stares of everyone else in Shujin’s courtyard—but for once he didn’t care.

None of them mattered. Even the few former members of the volleyball team didn’t matter—what had they done to help him or each other aside from goad each other on to keep everything secret? What had they done aside from feel sorry for themselves that all their chances for the future were essentially gone with Kamoshida?

A throat cleared. The two broke apart, wiping tears from their eyes, but even through the blur Yuuki recognized that sweater. “Mr. Mishima, I presume,” said Ms. Kawakami.

“Ah, yes,” Hirotaka said. He fumbled for his business card. Yuuki watched them trade cards and bows while he dug tissues out of his pocket.

He gave one to his dad and kept the other, mopping at his cheeks and trying not to meet the eye of anyone standing too close by.

Ms. Kawakami bowed again, deeper than before. “I’m so sorry about the way the school handled Mr. Kamoshida’s abuse. Please—if you have any grievances at all—”

“Oh, no,” Hirotaka said. “That’s—well, that’s all been handled, hasn’t it? From what I understand, it was through no fault of any of you teachers. I’m sure it must have been hard on all of you.”

“Very,” Ms. Kawakami said. She couldn’t seem to look either of them in the eye, though Yuuki realized, for the first time in years, that the ever-present bags under her eyes were gone. She looked healthier, her cheeks fuller; he had to wonder whether it was due to Kamoshida’s arrest or not—knowing that such an abusive colleague was finally behind bars must let her sleep better at night. “But those are just excuses. Something should have been done from the start—no, I’m getting off track. I—well.”

“Yes?” Hirotaka pressed.

Ms. Kawakami puffed out her cheeks and said, “I’m still disappointed I couldn’t get Mishima here to take a different career track,” she admitted. “He’s got a talent for writing—and not just code, either. I think he’d do well focusing on composition, among other things.”

“Oh,” Hirotaka said.

“I just want him to keep his options open. Maybe take a few writing courses at university, join a literature club… That kind of thing. It’s not that I don’t think what he’s chosen is good for him—I just think he’s got talent for it. That’s all.”

“Oh,” Yuuki said. He could remember her disappointed look at that particular counseling session—could remember her trying to persuade him otherwise.

She fidgeted under their combined stare. “Just—you know, if you find you aren’t happy, try that out. That’s—that’s all.”

“Okay,” Yuuki said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

She excused herself, looking only slightly sheepish at her final attempt to change his mind. She wasn’t wrong to, he thought. She was only looking out for him, as a last act as his teacher.

Well, maybe he could do both. Overachieving like that would probably keep the demons in his head at bay—or maybe it would be best to focus on one before the other.

He didn’t know. He could only stand there and stare at her as she went to greet other former students and their parents, handing out business cards and trading bows with guilty tears in her eyes.

A hand on his shoulder. “Well, should we be going? Or is there someone you’re waiting for?” Hirotaka asked. He, too, scanned the crowd, and Yuuki could guess what—or who—he was looking for.

“Oh, yeah,” Yuuki said, “I should introduce you to Boss and the others.”

“Boss? You got a job, Yuuki?”

“Uh, not exactly,” he said. “I’ll, um, explain on the way.”

And he did, chattering in his father’s ear the whole ride to Leblanc. Hirotaka was more amazed at the fact that his son had friends than he was by the fact that Yuuki had been sleeping above a cafe for a week.

“You never mentioned them to me,” he said, as they walked down the narrow alleys that made up Yongenjaya. His shoulders brushed flyers peeling from the walls: help wanted ads, missing pets, student tutors, music lessons. He ducked under a low-hanging lantern protruding from a storefront.

“You never asked,” Yuuki said. It wasn’t much of a reason; it almost sounded like an excuse. “And they never came up anyway—and you were almost never home… Do you want me to keep going?”

“No, that’s alright.” They side-stepped a woman coming out of the laundromat, arms laden with a heavy basket of clothes, and ducked into Leblanc.

“You’re back,” Boss said. “And you brought company, too.”

“Is that okay?” Yuuki asked.

“Sure,” Boss said, with a grin. “The more the merrier. The party won’t start until three, though; apparently Kosei’s graduation runs late.”

“Do you need help setting up?”

“Maybe later. For now, if you guys can wait, I don’t mind if you sit and chat.”

“Actually,” Hirotaka said, “I’d like to thank you first for watching over my son. It’s not something a stranger should have to do, but you did it, and I’m very grateful.”

“Oh, it’s nothing.” Boss never seemed keen on accepting thanks of any kind; now was no exception, as he turned his back to them to check the pot on the stove, one hand threading through the thinning hair on his head as he thought up a way to brush it all off. “He’s been a big help.”

Futaba ducked her head through the banister upstairs; her hair dripped like vines halfway down the wall. “The sooner you admit you’re a big softie, Sojiro, the better,” she quipped, before noticing the stranger in the room and tucking herself back out of sight.

“Who?” asked Hirotaka.

“Futaba,” Yuuki said, at the same time Boss answered, “My friend’s daughter.”

They both broke off at the same time; Boss looked over his shoulder as if to ask whether he should finish. “Um, that’s Futaba,” Yuuki explained. “Boss is her guardian.”

Hirotaka still looked confused, but Boss returned with a card in hand. “Sojiro Sakura,” Boss said as they traded cards. “Futaba’s been in my care for a few years while her mother’s working in America, but she still has some trouble with strangers. We’re hoping she gets over the worst of it before she graduates.”

“Oh, is that so?” Hirotaka’s face lit up. “You know, Yuuki was the same when he was younger. Wouldn’t approach anyone he didn’t already know, even if they were family—”

“I, uh,” Yuuki said, “I think I’ll go check up on her. Be right back.”

Boss gave him a nod; Hirotaka waved when he got to the stairs and checked to be sure the two were still talking. They were taking seats at the bar, which seemed like a sign they were going to be at it for a while, so he went on up, making sure to hit every creaky step.

Futaba was crouched on the couch, covered in all the blankets he’d dug out, chewing on a fingernail and watching a chatroom on her laptop. He took a seat on the opposite end and unpinned the ribbon from his jacket.

“Don’t lose that, Inari will want a picture.”

“No problem,” he said, putting it next to his diploma on the table. Three years for a piece of paper and a flower—a year of hell and two spent wallowing in the kind of misery that clung to him like a leech, draining away every bit of happiness as he got it, it felt like.

He sighed and leaned back until his head hit the wall. He stared at the rafters of the attic—kind of dusty, but there were no cobwebs spun through the wires strung up to give them light. Dust motes danced if he squinted hard enough; a dog barked down the street.

Futaba’s expression went soft when she heard it. “Did I ever tell you why I vanished on you?”

“No,” he said.

“Mona got sick,” she said. “Real sick. I thought he was gonna die. And when I thought that, I—”

She sniffed. Yuuki handed her a tissue. “Is he okay now?”

“He got better, yeah.” She wiggled her toes. Yuuki wondered how she could crouch like a gargoyle on anything and not walk away with numb feet. “But for a while I didn’t think he’d make it. Mom gave him to me to watch over while she’s away—she said he’d be a little piece of her, here by my side even if she was halfway across the world—but when he got sick I thought I’d screwed up and made something happen to her, or that it meant something _was_ happening to her, like Shido’s goons going after her to finish the job—”

“Why’d he want her dead, anyway?” he asked when she broke off.

“For her research. She’s been looking into cognition and how it affects reality, and a bunch of other stuff like that,” Futaba said, then snorted and rolled her eyes. “Maybe he thought he could use it to win the election. Guy’s got an ego bigger than the Pacific Ocean.”

“Yeah,” Yuuki said. He’d seen clips of the trial passing by TV stores on his sharl hunts; Shido’s voice practically dripped condescension with every word. He’d wondered how anyone could like the guy enough to support him through a campaign, much less elect him for Prime Minister.

Futaba sighed in a huff of breath. “Anyway, I thought Mona was gonna leave me behind. I knew there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it if he was ready to die, but I didn’t want him to. If I thought about him dying, I thought about Mom dying, and it made me realize how old Sojiro is, and that he’s not gonna be around forever. And when I thought that—”

“It scared you,” Yuuki guessed when she broke off. She nodded, lips pressed together to keep from sobbing, glasses perched on her forehead to better wipe off the tears that spilled over.

He fought to fill the silence. Futaba needed some time to pull herself together, after all. “When Suzui jumped from the roof, honestly, I thought, that’s it. That’s my way out. That’s the only way out. Kamoshida wouldn’t let anyone quit the teams once they were on, and I knew I couldn’t wait for graduation to escape from him. But Akira was depending on me. He’s the only reason I’m still here.”

“Sojiro’s the reason I’m still here,” Futaba said. “He got me help. I kept—I kept seeing these things, and hearing voices. They tried to tell me I was better off ending it all before everyone left me alone. But when one of them sounded like Sojiro—well, I had to know if he meant it. So I called him at Leblanc, and he came running home to get me out of there. Busted down the door and everything when I wouldn’t open it.”

Yuuki tried to imagine Boss busting down a door. “I’m surprised he didn’t hurt himself.”

“Oh, he did,” Futaba chuckled. “Sprained his ankle, nearly dislocated his shoulder. The paramedics weren’t happy, and the vet wasn’t, either, because it meant poor Mona had to stay there an extra day. How do you think Ryuji started helping out?”

“Oh,” Yuuki said. He’d never thought to ask.

One day he’d have to ask how somebody like Ryuji—with his love of ramen and dislike of coffee—met someone like Sojiro, who served nothing but coffee and curry every day of the week in his shop.

Really, he should have asked sooner. Should have proved he cared more, should have asked them things instead of dumping all of his problems in their laps all the time.

“So, anyway,” she said, trying to sound flippant—the effect was ruined by the wavering edge to her words. Clearly, even a year later, the events bothered her. “I got checked into one of those mental health centers. Stayed there a good couple of months, learning to take my pills like a good girl and how to not forget to eat or sleep—you know, all the stuff that normal people can do no prob. That’s where I ran into Inari; he was coming in for weekly check-ups while he was adjusting to his new apartment and guardian, and the center gave him lunch for helping with the art therapy classes. We wound up arguing a lot over what art was, or how things were supposed to be in alignment with each other—all that fun stuff.”

“Then you got out, met Ryuji, and got involved with all of… this,” Yuuki guessed.

“Nah, he visited with Inari a lot,” she said. “Said he liked to help out; I kinda thought he liked being a busybody, but that’s monkey-boy for you, I guess.”

“Was Mona happy to see you again?”

She shrugged. “You know how cats are. I think I was more happy to see him, but I was never very good at reading him. He could’ve been ecstatic and I wouldn’t have known.” She paused. “So, uh, who was that guy down there?”

“That’s my dad. You can say hello, if you want. He doesn’t bite.”

“Ha ha,” Futaba deadpanned. But she seemed to be thinking it over; her fingers ran over the keys on her keyboard, and though she was staring at the screen she didn’t seem to be reading anything. Yuuki didn’t know how she would be able to; the chat was moving far too fast for him to keep up. “Is he nice?” she finally asked.

“Nice enough,” he said. There wasn’t much else for him to say. Hirotaka had weathered everything so far and taken it about as well as Yuuki could hope—his worst fears had always been that the man just wouldn’t care at all, and to see him weeping over it, apologizing for it, over and over again…

Well. It didn’t make Yuuki happy, to see his father brought so low, to know he’d been the one to do it—to witness, over and over, how much they were the same.

(What made him happy was how much Hirotaka cared. What he was giving up—all those dreams he no doubt shared with Hiyoko over what kind of life their son would lead—just to make Yuuki feel safe and loved. Accepting Yuuki as a person, after failing so much as a father.

Yuuki didn’t think he’d failed. It just took him a bit longer than others to change. To care. That was all.)

“He’s better than Mom,” Yuuki said. “Wonder how all that turned out.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“Was afraid to,” he admitted. “Didn’t want to ruin today with talk about potential divorces and splitting the apartment or something. I thought he’d bring it up on the way here, but maybe he wants us to be alone before he springs it on me.”

“Does he know about Akira? Do either of them?”

He shook his head. “I think that’d be too much for him right now.”

“Yeah,” Futaba agreed. “He did look pretty tired.”

He hadn’t meant just Hirotaka—Akira, too, had gone through a lot in the past month. There was still the decision on whether to disconnect Yuuki to make, but Yuuki knew that Akira would never be happy until he’d done everything he possibly could to help everyone on the colony ship. All those former citizens he’d led for only a month or two—they all depended on him to find a better place to live. With the pathway to the planet he’d initially found cut off by Goro, his people were aimlessly drifting through space.

Yet he’d forced himself to find scraps of happiness, as if knowing that their time together wouldn’t be much longer. Akira knew what he had to do; he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

But he’d listen to Yuuki.

“Hey, Futaba,” Yuuki said.

“Yeah?”

“Tonight, can you and the guys find some time to help me with something? Please?”

“We’ll have to talk to Sojiro about that. You sure you wanna do whatever it is tonight?”

He could wait. He and Akira could keep blowing it off to play pretend, but then neither of them would get anywhere. Yuuki wanted to hold him, to hear him breathing, to feel Akira’s warmth under his hands—and they couldn’t do that with a screen in the way.

“Yeah,” he said. “It has to be tonight.”

“Well, okay,” Futaba said. “You know I’m game.”

They spent a while more upstairs, listening to the two fathers down in the cafe trade muffled stories and laughter. The bell on the door rang a handful of times, and Boss always stopped chatting long enough to serve up coffee or curry or both. Yuuki knew from the past week working with him that the man would leave you alone while you ate—would leave you be for hours if that was what you wanted—but always kept an eye on how full your cup was. He had a knack for knowing who needed to vent and who needed space, and who was just there for the food or the company.

Yuuki also knew that his father would be like he’d been, asking whether or not it was alright to leave clientele be for so long. He wondered if Hirotaka would understand Boss’s hands-off approach to the whole thing, wondered how his father would take it; he got his answer through stilted conversation that only picked up when one customer or another chimed in.

Boss liked his regulars, after all, and it helped that they liked him back.

Futaba showed him some unposted pictures of Mona, ones that were too blurry to really make the cat out. He, in turn, showed her some screenshots of Akira in some of the various outfits he’d made over the past year: a butler suit with a vibrant crimson necktie; the green peacoat and glasses; loose and baggy lounge wear Akira insisted was perfect for dancing in; Akira in his bridal kimono, looking happier than Yuuki had ever seen him.

Futaba choked on air when she saw that one, and naturally at that moment Ryuji came bounding up the stairs, diploma in hand and flower ribbon sticking out of his pocket. Futaba slapped his arm as she struggled to breathe; Ryuji, being Ryuji, ducked down to see what the deal was.

“Shit, man,” was all he said. “You didn’t mention that.”

“I didn’t mean to show her,” Yuuki said, feeeling the strange urge to defend himself. “And it’s not like I made him wear it! He’d been working on it for months; he even asked if it was too much.”

Futaba mumbled something about unfair pretty boys and hid under her blankets, wheezing away.

“Please don’t tell my dad,” Yuuki begged them. “I don’t think he can handle this kind of thing right now.”

“Sure, no prob,” Ryuji said, eyes wide. He plopped down in a chair, dug his phone out, and proceeded to busy himself with it. “Is he coming to the party?”

“He’s downstairs right now, so I guess so.”

Now that he was thinking about it, though, this was the first time his dad had ever taken some time off from work. Sure, he was still in a suit, but that was practically the only thing in his closet.

“Cool,” Ryuji said. “Do you know how late Yusuke’s gonna be?”

“His graduation ran until one,” Futaba said. “Which means he was probably out in the courtyard, surrounded by fans and well-wishers for another hour. That’s why I told Sojiro three; it’ll give him time to get here.”

“I’m surprised he kept going to Kosei,” Yuuki said. “He was out for a long time.”

“The school wasn’t the problem, it was Madarame. I’m more surprised he didn’t realize he could switch his focus earlier, even if he wound up going back to what he started with.” She sighed. “I guess it’s just what he’s meant to do.”

“Kosei wouldn’t kick out a kick-ass artist like Yusuke anyway,” Ryuji chimed in. “He’d wind up bein’ affiliated with a different school, and then that’d be their loss. No way were they passing that up.”

“Besides, by keeping him on they look charitable. With big, fancy schools like that it’s all about the reputation—how to build it up and keep it that way. Makes you wonder if they’re hiding any juicy secrets under all that pomp, you know?”

Yuuki’s stomach roiled at the thought of Yusuke being surrounded by a team of exploitative, abusive teachers just like Madarame or Kamoshida—of Yusuke not even realizing it as he was manipulated one way, then the other, until he had nothing left to his name.

Futaba glanced out of her cocoon, saw his rapidly blanching face, and exclaimed, “Kidding! I was kidding! I ran background checks on every single staff member there when Inari said he wanted to go back and the only juicy bit I found was an extramarital affair, and it turned out that was totally condoned by the guy’s wife! Turned out she was into it.”

“Well, when you have that much money you can probably do anything anyway,” Ryuji said. “But yeah, I visited their culture fest last year, and lemme tell ya, the only weird part was the ‘creative cuisine.’ The teach in charge of that station actually encouraged me to try all these weird-sounding dishes from places I’d never heard of. I think most of the stuff was things her students had spent months perfecting and adjusting n’ all that.” He stared at the floor. “It was kinda weird, watching a teacher get behind her students like that.”

“Did you actually try anything?”

“Oh, some kinda honey-glazed… chocolate-coated… steak kabob. Shit was good.” He glowered. “It had no business bein’ that good.”

“Sounds pretty good,” Futaba said. She nudged Yuuki; he snapped out of a day-mare involving Yusuke and volleyball nets and copious amounts of blue paint to hear, “Doesn’t that sound good?”

“Uh, sure,” Yuuki said, and pulled his phone out of sleep mode. Akira. Kimono.

He exited his gallery and shoved the device in his pocket.

Futaba snickered at him, emerging from her cocoon fully. “Well, I guess I better go say hi to your dad before Inari gets here and the party starts.”

She marched down the stairs. “You went to Yusuke’s school’s culture festival?” Yuuki asked.

“Uh, yeah,” Ryuji said. “Had nothin’ better to do, really.”

Yuuki couldn’t think of anything to say to that. He could hear Futaba downstairs, giving his dad a greeting in the highest pitch possible, and wondered how the glasses downstairs didn’t break. He could hear his dad’s answering low rumble, and Boss off in the kitchenette.

“Well, man,” Ryuji said. “We made it out alive.”

“Yeah,” Yuuki said. “But I think I’m the real winner here—I stuck it out at Shujin. You totally ran away.”

Ryuji shot him a grin. “You tell yourself that. So, what’re you gonna do with those rings? Ya can’t just keep ‘em in a box forever.”

He already felt like they were too much of a liability to be hauling around in his bag anyway, but he wasn’t sure what else to do. He hadn’t thought to get his fitted, but he didn’t want to invite questions about the rings in the first place. Hirotaka would definitely notice a ring, and he would definitely ask about it. “I could put them on a necklace. That’s a thing, right?”

Then he could hide them under his shirt. He’d still get questions but maybe he wouldn’t feel the need to answer them—or maybe he’d finally be brave enough to.

“Yeah,” Ryuji said. “Hell, Futaba wears one of her mom’s like that. Just—you know—you gonna be okay with people asking about ‘em?”

“Maybe,” he said. “But would they believe me?”

“D’you want ‘em to?”

“Yes,” he said, too quickly. In just as much of a rush to correct himself, he said, “Maybe. Maybe? I don’t really know. It all feels kind of lame when I think about it from an outside perspective.”

“Dude, it ain’t lame,” Ryuji said. “You helped this guy for years. You stuck it out with him and at Shujin and with your ‘rents bein’ kinda assholes. It ain’t lame.”

“Yeah,” Yuuki said, just to diffuse the growing tension. “I know.”

Ryuji studied him, still with that slight glaring scowl on his face, as if he knew Yuuki was bluffing—but instead of calling him out on it, he sighed. “Long as ya know that’s what I think, man,” was all he said, before he checked his phone for the time. “S’almost time for the party. You wanna go see if Boss wants some help?”

“Oh, sure, just let me plug in my phone.”

Yuuki felt kind of bad, leaving Akira out of the celebration like this. Akira had assured him he would be fine for the night, _so go and have fun, Yuuki._ He’d be waiting.

He’d always be waiting.

Waiting and waiting—and Yuuki knew it had to stop.

 

* * *

 

 

The party went well. Boss had splurged on sushi from a fancy restaurant, but it quickly became apparent it wouldn’t be enough food to feed everyone—Yusuke and Futaba’s appetites were enormous, and they devoured most of a platter by themselves half an hour in—so Hirotaka ordered pizza. He insisted on paying for it, despite Boss’s insistence that it was his own fault he didn’t have enough for everyone.

“You’ve helped my son this much,” Hirotaka said. “This is the least I can do to return the favor.”

Ryuji’s mom shown up ten minutes later and offered to pitch in.

Boss sputtered and grumbled a bit—but a look out the window had him agreeing.

Ms. Akechi and Akira’s parents stumbled into the cafe, looking faintly perplexed by the amount of people inside despite the sign on the door reading ‘Closed’ just as Hirotaka disappeared up the stairs so he could order in peace. Ryuji’s mom followed along with the menu open on her phone.

“Are we interrupting something?” Ms. Akechi asked.

“Just a party. Although it’s gonna be up to the kids if you can join in,” Boss said.

“I see no reason why you shouldn’t,” Yusuke said. Ryuji shrugged, indifferent, and Futaba followed suit.

“It’s not my party,” she said.

They all turned to Yuuki. At this point he wouldn’t be the one to kick them out—not with Ms. Akechi wringing her hands with worry, not with the Amamiyas staring at him with something like hope in their eyes—and he thought he had no right to, anyway. The only one who could would be—

“He’d be graduating today, right?” he asked, just to be sure. “And Goro—he’d’ve graduated last year.”

“Oh,” Ms. Akechi said. “You remembered. But yes, Goro would have.”

She bit her lip; Mrs. Amamiya put a hand on her shoulder. “Ren would be too, yes,” she said. “We thought—well, we hoped—”

She broke off, too embarrassed to ask.

“I can get him if you want to talk to him,” Yuuki offered.

“No, that’s alright,” Mr. Amamiya said. “Although it did cross our minds, we decided we can wait a little longer to see him in person. Really, what you did was far more than we could’ve imagined in the first place.” He cleared his throat. “No, we’re—we’re here to give you a gift. A thank you for helping Ren so much. Dear, you’ve still got it, don’t you?”

“Oh! I do, I do, it’s somewhere in here,” Mrs. Amamiya said, then proceeded to dig through the purse hanging off her arm. The thing was nearly as big as Yuuki’s schoolbag; how much stuff did she have in there?

“Emiko also pitched in for it, once she knew. You’ve helped her, too; she thought it was only fair.”

Ms. Akechi—Emiko, Yuuki guessed—sniffed once and said, “It’s the least I can do. You’re helping Goro, too, after all. Please bring him home.”

He wanted to tell her he would. That he’d give everything he had to bring Akira and Goro home, where they belonged—but he couldn’t. After tonight it wouldn’t be up to him—it would all be up to Akira and whoever he managed to connect the terminal to.

But he couldn’t not say anything. “I’ll do my best,” he settled for. “Ak— _Ren_ and I both.”

Mr. Amamiya raised a brow. His wife exclaimed with triumph, finally pulling a crinkling package out of her bag. Her heels clicked on the floor, sharp as a gunshot.

She presented it to him with a faint smile on her face. He thought her eyes could be Akira’s, if Akira’s were clouded over with years of worry and bloodshot from too many shed tears.

Unlike Akira’s, he could see himself in them—that in itself was distracting, distancing, and he barely heard her say, “Congratulations on your graduation.”

“Oh, um,” he said, as eloquent as always as she dropped it into his hands, “thanks.”

“Go on, open it,” she said. Anticipation colored her cheeks; it made her look ten years younger.

“Give him some space, dear,” said Mr. Amamiya.

The stairs creaked; Hirotaka and Ryuji’s mother rounded the corner as Yuuki let a shimmery silver chain fall into his palm. He let the links pool around his fingers, watching the light dance off it, feeling how utterly weightless it was.

Just when he’d been thinking of getting a necklace to hang their rings from—the timing seemed a little too perfect. But plenty of college boys wore necklaces; Yuuki had several classmates who did, too. It wasn’t so strange.

But a gift from a group of near strangers?

Yuuki let that thought hang there, suspended, as his dad looked over the gift, brows furrowed. Hirotaka wouldn’t understand their connection without knowing about Akira—and Yuuki didn’t want to tell him just yet, especially not in a crowded cafe on his likely only day off in forever.

Something poked out of the paper sleeve. A note, folded several times over and turned sideways to just barely stick inside.

As if they, too, knew how badly he wanted to keep this secret right now.

The Amamiyas were back together. Ms. Akechi had moved back to the door, one hand gripping her purse so tightly her knuckles had gone bone-white. The tension between them was as taut as a piano wire; Mrs. Amamiya’s knees quivered under the weight of it.

“It’s perfect,” he said, at last. He set the sleeve aside and tried to undo the clasp—his fingers refused to work. Hirotaka eyed his shaking hands and took over.

His dad’s fingers were warm and the chain was cool where it touched his skin. He was sure necklaces weren’t meant to be worn over turtlenecks and the like, but left it there.

“How do I look?” Yuuki asked.

“Like an NPC,” Futaba quipped.

“Futaba,” admonished Boss.

“It does nothing to detract from your overall average demeanor,” Yusuke added.

“Yusuke!”

“Yeah, it ain’t you,” Ryuji stated. Yuuki burst into laughter at the matching grins on their faces, although Yusuke—who never could quite twist his lips that way—looked constipated.

“Ryuji!” shouted Ms. Sakamoto.

“‘S’alright, ma, we’re joking,” he defended. “See? He’s laughin’.”

“That doesn’t make it okay!”

“It’s fine, Ms. Sakamoto,” Yuuki managed to get out. He let the chuckles die out over a few more moments. “And, um, thank you again. For the gift.”

“It’s no trouble,” Mr. Amamiya said. “Sorry for crashing your party again. Take care. And we really will buy something next time, Mr. Sakura.”

Boss waited until they were out the door to mutter, “Every time they come here…”

“They can’t really help it, can they?” Futaba said. “How else are they going to find the NPC?”

“Futaba.”

Futaba cringed. “Yeah, I know.”

“Customers of yours?” Hirotaka asked.

“Future customers,” Boss said. “They owe me two house specials each, decaf.”

“And they know my son?”

Everyone froze. Eyes locked onto Yuuki; suddenly he was glad he took the few seconds of chatter to tuck his new necklace under his shirt. “I’m, um,” he said, floundering for a way to explain Akira’s entire situation and how such a random group of adults knew him well enough to give him a graduation gift.

“Their son’s pretty sick,” Ryuji blurted out.

“The NPC’s been talking to him,” Futaba added. “You know, online therapy and stuff.”

Yusuke nodded. “Reaching out and connecting to others has been doing wonders for his health of late. Yuuki was telling us just the other day that Akira was out and about again, weren’t you?”

“Uh, yeah,” Yuuki said. Hirotaka turned to level a stare at him; Ryuji had the nerve to give him a thumbs-up behind his father’s shoulder.

“What’s he sick with?” Hirotaka asked.

Yuuki paled; his stomach seemed drop thirty feet into the sewers running under the streets.

“Mr. Mishima,” said Ms. Sakamoto, “that’s not something you should be asking. It’s rather rude.”

Hirotaka shut his eyes. Took a deep breath; Yuuki felt the air hit his face on the exhale. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long week. Maybe I should go turn in.”

“You’ve barely eaten anything,” contested Mr. Sakura.

“No, I have,” Hirotaka said. “I’ve gotten used to small meals from working at the office so much. It’ll tide me over until morning.”

He picked up his suit jacket from where he’d draped it on a bar stool and shrugged it on, then dug his wallet out of a pocket and counted out some bills. “This should cover the food,” he said, and laid it on the bar.

“Dad,” Yuuki said. “You don’t have to go.”

“I know,” he said. “But I wasn’t lying about being rather tired, Yuuki. If I stay any longer I might fall asleep on the train. I’ve been worried, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Yuuki said. He felt stupid—naturally his dad would be tired. Most likely his mother had been making him sleep on the couch, and Yuuki knew from experience how uncomfortable that couch was. He’d fallen asleep on it sometimes when he was cramming for tests and needed more work space than his desk or the dining table could give him, waking only when one of his parents came in the door.

Hirotaka moved to leave, his steps slow and heavy. Yuuki knew that pace—the way his shoes dragged across the floor, the way his shoulders slumped, the way his head hung low.

Yuuki had been like that, once. He still was, some of the time, when life threatened to drag him under and drown him in one responsibility or secret or another. When he felt like that, the only thing he wanted was—

He threw himself at his dad’s back, arms wrapping tight around his waist, before he even knew he was doing it. “Someday I’ll explain everything,” he promised. “Will you—will you listen when I do?”

“Of course,” Hirotaka said. “Let go for a second, Yuuki.”

He did; Hirotaka turned and wrapped him up in a bear hug all his own. Yuuki gripped his suit jacket, not even caring about the wrinkles he was leaving, just breathing in his father, soap and sharp cologne and the faintest whiff of cheap instant coffee.

When was the last time he’d hugged his dad like this? He didn’t remember—had it been back when he was still a kid, was still smiling and happy and ignorant of the world, back when he’d be overjoyed just to have both his parents home to chatter to over the dinner table about his day, back when he was happy just to see them at all—or had it been more recent?

No, he couldn’t remember, and didn’t want to, even if it felt strange: his nose bumping his dad’s collarbone, his hands meeting around his dad’s waist, the light rasp of stubble by his ear.

“I’m so proud,” Hirotaka said softly.

“I know,” Yuuki said.

(For a second, he thought about saying it back. That he was proud of Hirotaka for standing up for his son and daring to be so grossly affectionate in public, surrounded by nearly all of Yuuki’s friends. None of them would think any lesser of either of them for it—Ryuji’s mom gave out lots of hugs, whenever Yuuki saw her—but Hirotaka wouldn’t see it that way.

Later, he decided.)

“Thanks for coming,” he said.

“Always,” Hirotaka said, and drew back. He looked Yuuki up and down once, then twice, and sighed. “Now, I really should be going. Have a nice evening, everyone.”

Yuuki felt cold—chilly, after the sheer warmth of another person—but barely had time to acknowledge it before Ryuji had slung an arm around his shoulders.

He really liked doing that, didn’t he?

“Shit, man, you didn’t tell us your dad was cool like that,” Ryuji said.

“I didn’t—you thought that was cool?”

“Why wouldn’t it be? He just—y’know, accepted that there was stuff about you he didn’t know, and didn’t get all huffy about it. Some’a the kids in my class wish they could have a dad as cool as yours.”

“I think he would have, if he weren’t so tired,” Yuuki said.

“It’s a hard roadblock for parents to overcome,” Ms. Sakamoto said. “Really, Ryuji, let that boy stand up straight, or he’ll wind up a hunchback like you are.”

“Roadblock? What’s that mean?”

She gently pried Ryuji’s arm off him. “It just means it’s hard for us to watch you grow up from oversharing children who will tell me he’s friends with a boy in kindergarten because you both wore yellow shoes to adults with lives like our own, and secrets you want to keep the same way we do. That’s all it means, dear.”

Ryuji grinned. “I dunno, ma, yellow shoes are still pretty cool.”

That earned him a swat on the arm.

“But that reminds me,” Yusuke said, “what is Akira up to today? Did he not want to join us?”

“No, actually,” Yuuki told him. That still perplexed him, even after Akira had told him why. “He said, uh—well, he can hear me now. We can talk to each other. But we aren’t sure whether he can hear everyone or just me, and he thought listening in on the party and only getting to hear bits of it wouldn’t be, um, fair. He said it’d feel like listening to a song with only the melody, or something like that.”

“Like those karaoke versions of songs,” Futaba said, with a nod. “It’s just not right without the vocals!”

“Or like listenin’ in on a phone call and you only hear one side of it,” Ryuji said. “‘Specially when it’s not goin’ so hot.”

“A landscape, perhaps without the sky…” Yusuke was fishing for that one, Yuuki could tell. Maybe it was an artist thing. “But it’s good to hear that you can finally communicate properly. You must have a wealth of stories to share with each other.”

“Uh, yeah,” Yuuki said, and silently willed Futaba and Ryuji to not blurt out the truth. Futaba positively vibrated with excitement, but cringed back under cover of her booth seat when she saw his look.

“Does he know that other-world language yet?” Ryuji asked. “It’s gotta have one, right?”

“I’m not sure,” Yuuki said. “They all sound like they speak Japanese. Maybe the app is translating for me.”

Ryuji groaned. “Lame.”

But Futaba and Yusuke seemed interested—Yusuke more in the architecture and any art Akira had come across, and Futaba in whether or not it was possible to code a real-time translation app.

Strange, he thought as they settled into a conversation about the culture and science of Ra Ciela. Today was the day they were graduating, and none of them had seemed very interested before, but even Ryuji started chiming in once the topic of magic got involved. Boss asked after the cuisine, Ms. Sakamoto marveled at the descriptions of some of past-Akira’s song magic (and, strangely, didn’t seem to care that Akira had gone from being a boy in a chatroom, as Yuuki distantly remembered her believing, to a boy trapped in another dimension), and Yuuki wondered if they didn’t have the future or Akira to talk about whether that would mean they would wind up floundering for topics.

But this was about Akira, and about Ra Ciela. Yuuki had spent the last three years watching as it ripped Akira apart—but now, out of context of that, it sounded wonderful, even if it did seem like a planet-wide Japan.

The pizza arrived, and they ate while trading stories. Ms. Sakamoto had several anecdotes about her coworkers she was willing to share. Boss had several of his own, back when he’d worked with Futaba’s mom. Futaba shared some that her online friends had told her; Yusuke only knew about exhibitions, and shared a couple tales of what he told them was ‘rather unseemly behavior for a venue of that magnitude.’

Ryuji told them how Takamaki and Suzui were doing. Good, they said, but while Takamaki missed Japan she knew she didn’t fit in there and was trying to find her place by her parent’s side. Suzui was off to a school like Ryuji’s, where she could learn how to teach others the joys of moving your body and pushing your limit at any age.

But eventually Ms. Sakamoto started yawning. Boss cleaned up the pizza boxes and the sushi trays while the rest of them cleaned up the plates and the cups and the balls of napkins that Ryuji had thrown to the trashcan. The light outside was finally dim, the lamps strung across the street slowly flickering to life, and Ms. Sakamoto was shaking her head.

“Oh, it’s getting late,” she remarked, as if just noticing, “and I’ve got work in the morning. Will you be staying over tonight, Ryuji, or coming home?”

“I was hoping we could have a bit of a sleepover, actually,” Yuuki said quickly. Better to just be out with it, since he wasn’t sure if Futaba had told the other boys he needed help. “You know, before adulthood gets in the way of us meeting up regularly and all that.”

Boss looked suspicious. Ms. Sakamoto said it was alright with her if Ryuji wanted to stay—that was why she asked, after all.

Yusuke mused aloud, “I don’t believe I’ve ever been to a sleepover. What does one do at such things?”

“We paint our nails and talk about boys, duh,” Futaba said, and turned to her guardian with puppy eyes magnified by her glasses. “Come on, Sojiro, please?”

“Futaba,” Boss sighed, in that way that Yuuki was beginning to think was default. “You’re—you’re barely seventeen, and they’re—”

“Uh, gay,” Yuuki reminded him.

“‘Taba’s like my boss, Boss,” Ryuji said.

Yusuke, who seemed to lack tact on a full stomach, asked, “Is he worried we’ll take advantage of you, Futaba?”

“It’s a very real concern, Yusuke,” Ms. Sakamoto said. “You aren’t kids.”

Yusuke’s face scrunched up, like he’d smelled something foul. “As if I would ever engage in such crass behavior! To take advantage of someone, as Madarame did to me? Do you think of us so lowly, Mr. Sakura? So bestial?”

Boss pinched the bridge of his nose. He had every right to refuse—Futaba was his charge, and a girl, and they were suggesting he leave her with a bunch of boys, and all four of them hormonal teenagers to boot. Yuuki braced himself for a no and raced for a plan to keep Futaba roped into it anyway.

“If you so much as hurt a hair on her head,” was the eventual response, stilted, like he didn’t want to say it.

“Are you sure, Mr. Sakura?” Ms. Sakamoto asked, worry in every line of her face.

“Of course not,” he said, just a tone off from snapping it out. “But—Futaba’s never been to a sleepover, either. Now she wants one, and I can’t find it in me to say no, and she knows that, I’m sure.”

“Sojiro,” Futaba said. Her voice quivered.

“But you’re right: watching them grow up into adults is hard. You want to keep protecting them from the world forever, even though you know it’s impossible. She’s seventeen. I have to learn to trust her like an adult. You boys, too.”

He fixed them with a look that said he’d castrate them all himself with his coffee grinder if he found they’d forced her to do one thing or another. Yuuki knew exactly what, too.

Yuuki wondered how Boss would have handled Kamoshida, had Futaba been sporty and a volleyball player and still in school. He had the feeling not even Kobayakawa could protect Kamoshida from Boss’s wrath.

“Sojiro,” Futaba said again, and this time threw her arms around him. “Thank you! Thank you!” then she froze. “But what are you guys gonna sleep in? Those uniforms won’t be comfy.”

“Crap, she’s right,” Ryuji said, eyes wide. “We’ll, uh, we’ll meet back here in an hour?”

“I’ll be fine like this,” Yusuke said. “I’ve fallen asleep in my uniform numerous times. It’s quite comfortable.”

“No, it ain’t,” Ryuji said, and tugged him out the door. Ms. Sakamoto followed along, waving goodbye. Futaba raced after them, her hair streaming behind her in the window.

Boss looked at him. Yuuki stared back, too scared to blink. “S-sorry, sir,” he said.

“No, it’s alright,” Boss sighed. “It really is hard, watching you all grow up. And I mean _all_ of you; that includes that Akira boy, too.” He paused to take a deep breath, then let it out, slow and steady. “I just don’t want her to get hurt again.”

“I’d never hurt Futaba,” Yuuki said. He thought of Suzui, and how Futaba had admitted how depressed and suicidal she’d been over a sick cat. Someone like Kamoshida could push Futaba over the edge far faster than someone like Suzui, and Yuuki wouldn’t be that person.

He hoped she never met anyone like that.

“As long as we’re clear,” Boss said. “But, in the meantime, help me finish cleaning up.”

“Sure,” he said.

 

* * *

 

 

The work was a pleasant distraction from the nervous butterflies settling in his gut. Even after Futaba came back with another mountain of blankets heaped in her arms, he found he couldn’t settle down.

He blamed the soda and coffee. Sugar and caffeine were making his hands shake and his heart race a million miles a minute, not nerves or anticipation, and Futaba’s psych-up playlist piped in through her laptop speakers wasn’t helping.

When there wasn’t anything left to do—when Futaba told him to _stop fussing, already_ —he sneaked into the bathroom and sat on the toilet, lid down, in the dark.

For once the thought didn’t make him feel pathetic. He just wanted a moment to unwind a bit before Ryuji and Yusuke came back and wound him back up again—because once they were here, he’d have to finish it, and the thought made his stomach boil until he thought he’d be sick and made his hands shake so badly he couldn’t hold his phone for fear of dropping it.

He could blame the party all he wanted. It wasn’t true, but there in the dark no one else was there to question him.

He breathed to counts of ten, with his hands folded as if in prayer, and willed himself to calm down. Akira was strong and practically commanded faith, if not attention, everywhere he went. He would be fine without Yuuki for a while, even though Yuuki knew how much Akira would miss him, knew how much this would rip Akira apart inside.

Yuuki was already torn. In the space between breaths he considered not going through with it at all, just leaving everything as it was until Akira was the one to decide to end it all. He and the others could have a proper sleepover without Yuuki and his feelings ruining it.

But if they ever found out why he’d asked for it in the first place, they wouldn’t be happy with him. They would know how he chickened out at the last minute—never mind that his head knew it had to happen—because his heart wouldn’t be able to take it.

But tonight would be one of the last nights they were all together.

It had to be tonight.

Once they were gone, Yuuki wouldn’t be able to do it.

A clamor sounded out in the cafe as Ryuji and Yusuke came back. Yuuki could hear plastic bags swinging from one of their hands; Ryuji groaned about the weight of the bags he was carrying, but Yusuke was quiet. Yuuki let them pass by up the stairs before splashing water on his face and scrubbing it dry. He gave his reflection, unseen in the darkness, one last look.

He hoped he looked okay, but he didn’t want to know.

He checked the lock on the cafe door three times before throwing the shutter across the window and heading back up the stairs. Ryuji had already unzipped a rather large duffel bag and was digging through it, pulling out several board games and stacking them in Yusuke’s waiting hands. The plastic bags were discarded on the floor, contents strewn about the table: those potato sticks Yusuke liked, chips and onigiri and sandwiches, ice cream in ten different flavors, tea and iced coffee and juice and soda. Some of it was leftover from the party, but Yuuki knew Boss would die before serving vending machine coffee in his cafe.

“Tell me you packed some pajamas in there,” Futaba said, as Ryuji produced a tenth board game from his bag of wonders.

“Sure I did,” he replied, “I just gotta get to ‘em, that’s all.”

“Why one earth would we need so many of these?” Yusuke asked, face partially obscured.

“We gotta have variety, ya know? I know you played some of these at the center, but ‘taba might not have.”

Futaba shuddered. “Board games. Interaction. No thanks.”

“Futaba watched a lot of television at the center, from what I remember,” Yusuke informed them. “Though she insisted on only watching Featherman.”

“Just because you don’t understand what a masterpiece it is doesn’t mean I don’t,” Futaba said. “And it is. A masterpiece. All that art must have rotted your brain, Inari.”

Yusuke sniffed. Yuuki could sense the impending argument like an electric charge to the air; that wasn’t how he wanted this to go. He didn’t want the evening started with Yusuke attempting to tear Featherman—a show Yuuki had enjoyed as a kid, but grown out of like most high schoolers—down for cheap costumes or meager puppetry or even for the laughable poses.

Yuuki opened his mouth, but Yusuke was already saying, “While there are a great many things I dislike about it, I will say I enjoy the homages to kabuki theater present in the acting, and that is all.”

“That’s all?!” Futaba shouted.

“There!” Ryuji plopped the last of the board games on the stack with triumph. The stack reached rather precariously over Yusuke’s head, and he blinked from behind it. “And yeah, Featherman’s pretty great! Goro likes it, don’t he? We should have a marathon of all the seasons he missed while he was gone when he gets back!”

“A sound enough idea, I suppose,” Yusuke said. The stack threatened to spill off the table when he set it down, and he and Ryuji spent a few minutes shoring it up.

Yuuki didn’t understand why. They were going to have to clear the table to play it—

But that wasn’t the point.

“Um, before we pick a game,” Yuuki said, “there’s something I’d like to do.”

“I do still want that photo,” Yusuke said.

“Not that,” Yuuki said. “But I’d like one, too.”

He paused. Eyed the food on the table and Futaba munching away at a bag of chips despite everything she’d eaten earlier. Yusuke had knocked a few drinks over to make room for the games, and he was setting them aright, color-coordinated by bottle cap.

Ryuji was the only one looking at him, waiting for him to go on, knowing there had to be more.

So he did. “I want to talk to Akira one last time.”

Ryuji’s face softened in understanding. “You sure, dude?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But, it’s just, if I’m by myself, I don’t think I can do it. I know it’s selfish of me to want you all here, but I do.”

“I don’t think it’s selfish,” Yusuke said.

“Yeah, man,” Ryuji said. “‘S’already gonna be hard on ya. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

“Thanks,” Yuuki said. “Let me, uh, get everything ready.”

He took his time digging his phone speaker out of his bag as Ryuji moved the stack of games to the workbench in the corner. Futaba dumped several of the snacks onto the couch beside her and when he slumped into his earlier seat offered him a blanket. Yusuke, for one reason or another, began arranging everyone’s flower ribbons on the empty table space.

Yuuki pulled the blanket tight around his shoulders. Ryuji squeezed in between him and Futaba and Yusuke settled on the armrest on his right.

Yuuki thought it was the crinkle of the bags of chips that sent Ryuji shooting up. “The rings!” he shouted, diving for Yuuki’s schoolbag. “Ya gotta put the rings on, man!”

“Rings?” asked Yusuke.

“Why?” asked Futaba.

“Because,” Ryuji groaned. “It ain’t—I mean, it’s like—”

“I’ll wear them,” Yuuki said. “We can—we can string them on my necklace. Right?”

Ryuji shot him a grin. Futaba shoved the bags of snacks to the floor. “Is this a couple thing?”

“No,” Yuuki told her. “It’s a me thing.”

At least with the rings he could have something to hold onto as he told Akira goodbye. It had to happen. It had to, but that didn’t mean forfeiting the future—their future, together or not—and the rings were proof of that.

He didn’t explain himself. Yusuke was already waxing poetic about bonds of destiny and the red string of fate over his head, and Futaba was making interested noises even though it was clear she didn’t care.

Ryuji extracted the bag from the jeweler’s, dug around inside for the boxes, then carefully made his way back over to the couch. Yuuki took off his necklace and held it up as, first one ring, then the other, were strung on.

The rings were cold on his collarbone. Ryuji reclasped the necklace and then settled in beside him, dragging the table closer so no one would have to crane their heads too far.

Yuuki plugged in his speaker, set his phone on the table, and started the app.

It felt like forever before Akira appeared, sunk deep in thought at his desk. There were the shapes of tools about its surface and something that vaguely looked like a piece of rock or metal, but Akira’s hands were still. He stared, thousands of miles away, the light in his eyes flickering on and off, like he was at war with himself.

“Akira,” Yuuki said softly. It was enough to get the boy on the other side of the screen to start.

 _“_ _Yuuki,”_ he said, blinking slowly. _“Is your party over already?”_

“Uh, yeah. It’s over. It was—it was good. My dad was there. Your parents showed up, too. And Ms. Akechi.”

 _“_ _Ms. Akechi,”_ Akira repeated. _“And Mom and Dad? They aren’t mad at me for what I told them?”_

“Guess not.” Ryuji’s breath fanned his cheek. Yusuke had a height advantage, but Yuuki could feel his breath tickling the hairs on his head. They pressed in on him; Futaba sneaked in closer, sitting half in Yuuki’s lap and half in Ryuji’s. Yuuki could smell her shampoo—some kind of citrus blend, spicy in his nose.

 _“_ _That’s good,”_ Akira said. It sounded like he was waking up from a dream—like he was coming back to himself. Yuuki wondered whether he’d remembered to eat today, and nudged a bag of chips with his shoe.

Probably not.

“Are you okay?” Yuuki dared to ask.

Akira was quick to laugh off the concern. His half-smile didn’t even reach his eyes. _“_ _Oh, I’ve just been wondering what we’ll do now that there aren’t anymore memories to go through. I don’t—I mean, I haven’t been able to think of anything. There’s not much we can do with a screen in the way.”_

He reached up to tug his bangs. There was a ring, simple and gray, sitting on his finger. Yuuki sucked in a breath at the sight of it; Akira was even quicker this time to drop his hand.

 _“_ _Sorry,”_ he said, running his fingers over it. _“I just—I mean, I wanted to feel it. Get used to it, you know, before—uh, before the real thing.”_

“Akira,” Yuuki said.

But Akira barreled on: _“And I think I get all those people on TV who complain about wearing them all the time. I had to take it off to cook yester—uh, earlier, and I nearly forgot where I put it! No wonder they get lost or stolen so easily! I’m surprised—”_

“Akira,” Yuuki said, with more force than he needed to use, “if you’re ready for the real thing come home. Come—come back to me.”

Akira, finally, looked up at the screen in surprise. _“Yuuki?”_

“I’ve got the real thing waiting for you right here,” Yuuki said, and hooked a thumb through Akira’s ring at his throat. Ryuji reached a hand up and steadied it, holding it there lest he snap the necklace right in two. He sniffed, once then twice, and gulped down against the lump building in his throat. “So—so come home. Come and get it. Come _back_ , Akira.”

 _“_ _Yuuki,”_ Akira said with a little laugh, _“you know I can’t do that. I’m kind of stuck here, you know.”_

“You aren’t! You aren’t stuck there! You know exactly how to get out now, and you won’t just to make me happy!”

Shit, he was crying. He’d managed to keep his eyes dry throughout the party, but now he was gasping for air and Yusuke was rubbing circles on his back and Futaba was patting his knee like it would help.

Still, it was enough to make Akira recoil. The pang of guilt that speared Yuuki’s chest at the sight made him want to vomit; still he pressed on. “We can’t keep going like this!” Yuuki told him. “I don’t _want_ to keep going like this! I want you here, with me, where we can be together! But I can’t do anything from my side anymore, Akira! It has to be you!”

 _“_ _It has to be me,”_ Akira echoed. His gaze went back to the table—then to the robot standing off in the corner. _“It has to be—but are you sure? And—and what if I don’t want to?”_

“You said you love me,” Yuuki reminded him. It felt like his throat was being scraped raw; he’d never shouted so much in his life. “Were you lying, when you said that?”

 _“_ _I wasn’t,”_ Akira said, but he wouldn’t look at the screen.

“Liar,” Yuuki sobbed. “If you weren’t lying you’d look at me.”

 _“_ _I’m not lying,”_ Akira said, but he wouldn’t look at the screen.

“Liar,” Yuuki said. “Liar! If you meant it you’d be scrambling to come back! You would have told me ages ago that you were going to fix everything and come home and then gone off and done it! If all you wanted was this sham—”

 _“_ _I’m not lying!”_ Akira shouted. His hands clenched into fists on the table; there was something broken in his eyes. Yuuki hated it. _“I’m_ not _lying! I love you! I love you so much I don’t want to lose you! I want to keep going with you by my side! I want to finish this_ together _! It won’t be the same if it’s someone else! Who else is going to know how much suffering Goro and I have been through? Who else is going to care about us enough to see this through to the end? I don’t want to watch someone else come in and then leave because they get bored, Yuuki! I don’t want that!”_

Akira was crying, uselessly banging the table, causing the tools to rattle. The sight wasn’t entirely new—Akira had cried plenty after hard memories, and sad ones, and even ones that made him too happy, and past-Akira had done his share of crying as the Imperial Succession dragged him ever closer to hell with each passing day—but today it was, because Akira was crying because of Yuuki. For Yuuki.

 _“_ _I don’t want you to leave me!”_ Akira cried. His face scrunched up; he shoved it into his hands. _“I don’t want to l-leave you! I don’t—I don’t w-want—w-want anyone else. I d-don’t want a-a stranger who—who doesn’t know anything to come in a-and make me think—make me think they’re g-going to help, a-and then th-they don’t!”_

“Akira,” Yuuki said, voice hoarse. Tears dripped down his cheeks in itchy trails.

 _“_ _There were others at first,”_ Akira admitted, after he spent a while calming down. _“I can—can kind of remember them. They—they all felt different. But the only one who kept coming was_ you _! If you’re not here, I can’t do this!”_

“Yes you can,” Yuuki said.

Akira shook head and moaned, _“No, I can’t! Arsene is gone—Goro hates me—Morgana’s not even real—I don’t know where any of the others are! I don’t know if they’re okay, or if they’re waiting for me, or if they’ve ditched me here! Renaflask would do it; he hated me. You saw.”_

“Do it anyway.”

 _“_ _I told you I can’t!”_

“You can!” Yuuki argued. “You can! You’re strong! Stronger than me, strong enough to stand on your own two feet and dare the world to knock you over! You’re strong, and brave, and smart, too! Whatever’s going on, however you have to fix it, you’ll find a way! I know you can!”

But Akira was shaking his head. _“I can’t! I don’t want to do it alone! I can’t do it alone!”_

“You won’t be alone! You’ll have me! I won’t ever leave you!”

 _“_ _But you won’t_ be _there! You won’t be there—you won’t be at my side! It won’t be the same!”_

Yuuki was now gripping Akira’s ring so tightly he couldn’t feel his hand. If he leaned forward any more Futaba would fall right off his lap to the floor; he didn’t care. “Akira Kurusu,” he declared, “are we bound by the red string of fate or not?”

 _“_ _I—what?”_

“Are we bound by the red string of fate or not?”

 _“_ _Fate?”_ Akira asked. He dragged his face—slightly swollen, pink-cheeked, red-eyed, and tear-stained—from out of his hands. _“What’s—what’s fate got to do with—”_

“Are we bound by the red string of fate or not?” Yuuki demanded.

 _“_ _Fate,”_ Akira repeated. It was like he was hearing it for the first time, like he didn’t understand what it meant—but his fingers went for his ring. Amateurly crafted and simple, but his.

His.

Akira had to know. Akira was the one who wanted rings—said they were real, that simple kisses would never be enough proof. Rings were real. Rings were forever.

 _“_ _Yuuki, please,”_ Akira pleaded. _“Please don’t bring fate into this. Fate’s got nothing to do with this.”_

But his hand wasn’t leaving the ring. Rings were real—rings were forever—and they had a set between them. Yuuki could tell there were two worn on top of each other—could see the flash of skin in between at times—but if Akira wanted to act like there was only one, so be it.

“Are we, Akira?”

Akira whined. He heaved in a great breath and let out a handful of more sobs.

Time for harder tactics. Time to be cruel.

“What will you do if I start hating you?”

 _“_ _I, uh,”_ Akira said, but didn’t bother to finish.

“What will you do if I stop visiting?” Yuuki asked. It hurt just to think it: a life without Akira would be awful, but a life where Akira was still always a push of a button away but Yuuki wouldn’t talk to him—couldn’t talk to him—was worse.

 _“_ _Yuuki, please, don’t,”_ Akira said.

“Shit,” Ryuji whispered in his ear. “You’re goin’ hard on him? Now?”

“I’ll do it,” Yuuki said. “I’ll stop visiting. I’ll find someone who will come back to me. You won’t be able to do a thing from there, will you?”

Akira whined again. He grasped fistfuls of his hair; tears still streamed out of his eyes.

“Even though you promised,” Yuuki told him, “you’re going to back out of it now, because you’re afraid? Even though you promised? What if I find someone else, Akira? What then?”

Akira sobbed. Yuuki wanted to sob, too; he could feel a few lodged somewhere in his chest, but they stayed there and burned like the tears that suddenly refused to fall. He was preparing his heart for another hurtful word—another insult slung across the screen, however veiled Yuuki made it—when Akira shuddered and said, _“I promised. I know.”_

And reached out his hand, the whole thing shaking like a leaf, the rings glittering in light Yuuki couldn’t find the source of, and shut the screen off.

 **Thank you for playing** , read the message that popped up in his place.

Yuuki crumpled into a heap and cried like his life depended on it. His friends pressed in against him, their warmth causing more tears to bubble out of him like they were being squeezed out, but he didn’t mind.

“You gonna be alright, Yuuki?” Ryuji asked as he sniffed and sobbed into Futaba’s hair. Her face, when he looked at the phone screen, was locked into a grimace as she imagined the snot he was rubbing in.

But she wasn’t telling him to stop. She leaned back instead, and Yusuke squared right up against his shoulder, likely just as self-conscious as Yuuki that he was in a prime position to rest his head on top of Yuuki’s.

But he wasn’t doing it. Yuuki pulled him in, and Ryuji too, closer and closer until he could feel them breathing against him, could feel their hearts beating beside his own.

Eventually he would be okay. For now, though, he had his friends, and he hoped Akira wouldn’t be too mad at him when all of this was done.

His part was over.

It was all up to Akira now.

 

* * *

 

 

Akira Kurusu pressed a little too hard on the disconnect button. The monitor was dark—as it had been for minutes, now—but he couldn’t bring himself to look at it.

Everything hurt. He couldn’t carry the monitor over like this. He’d drop it, and then Yuuki would never even have a chance at coming back.

If Yuuki even wanted to anymore. If Yuuki didn’t hate him already.

He dragged his hand back. Cradled his rings, tried to imagine Yuuki wearing one. A boy his age, maybe a little younger—but no, Yuuki had just graduated high school, hadn’t he, Yuuki was his age—but then again, time was so different here. A little younger, Akira thought, than Akira was now. So a high school boy, maybe with a shy smile—one that made it impossible for Akira not to kiss it.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there cradling his rings with the monitor listing to one side in its port. He wasn’t sure how long it took him to drag himself out of his chair—how long it took him to pick up the monitor and carry it over to the robot, where he set it in its place but left it just enough out that it didn’t connect.

He wanted it to be Yuuki. He didn’t want to be Ionasal kkll Preciel, Emperor and savior of Ra Ciela, being from the eighth dimension, anymore. He wanted to be Akira.

But he couldn’t be Akira. He couldn’t even be Ren Amamiya, newly-expelled homeless high school boy with an assault charge under his belt.

Whoever it was on the other side of the screen wouldn’t know him. None of his friends here would understand. Goro might, but Goro hated him enough to throw his life away to try yet another attempt to go home. Goro was desperate enough to rip anyone who crossed him to shreds.

Akira was proof of that.

Yuuki was also desperate enough to rip anyone who crossed him to shreds.

The monitor, dark and lifeless, was proof of that.

Akira walked away from it.

Whoever the monitor would connect him to next wouldn’t know Akira or Ren; they likely wouldn’t even know Ion, but that was who Akira was to the people of Ra Ciela. Ion. Emperor. Savior.

Putting on the clothes he’d first met Yuuki in, he repeated it over and over:

Ion. Emperor. Savior.

Ion. Emperor. Savior.

Akira could wait. Akira could wait forever.

Cloth slipped over his head. It felt like a costume—so he imagined it as such. This was Ion’s costume. He was playing Ion’s part—Ion’s role—and nothing more. Like slipping on a mask in a play and pretending, but this wasn’t pretend—lives were at stake, Akira’s own included.

Akira could wait. Ion could not.

Ionasal kkll Preciel went over to the robot standing guard in the corner, righted the monitor inside, and slipped it into place. He waited for the flicker of life proving it had reached someone on the other side, but it remained dark and empty, cold and lifeless.

The sight made him want to cry. Instead, he touched his rings. He could stand there forever, waiting for someone to find him and help him get home. He was prepared to wait forever.

In the meantime, he practiced.

“How do you do,” he said. “My name is Ionasal kkll Preciel. Please, if you find it in your heart, help me.”

And he waited.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look out for xest sometime in December.


End file.
